[Colonel_Cool]

Playing through the FS2 campaign, I got a little bit confused. What is the significance of the Knossos portal? Why is it needed when ships can just teleport with subspace drives? I just got confused in the mission where you had to destroy the Knossos portal to prevent the arrival of the Sathanas.

[Snail]

The Knossos was stabilizing the Jump Node to the Nebula system. Jump Nodes are needed for intersystem jumps (between systems). Jump Nodes are unnecessary for intrasystem jumps (within the system)

[Dysko]

The Knossos can stabilize a unstable or collapsed jump node, or even create new ones (but this is not canonically confirmed).

Ships can't jump from one system to another simply using their subspace drives due to gravitational forces (see subspace entry in FS2 techroom). This means that intersystem jump can be performed only jumping in jump nodes.

The Knossos was built to stabilize an unstable node and, , we can jump to the nebula. It was destroyed hoping it would make the Gamma Draconis-nebula node collapse, stopping the Sathanas. However, its long activation time stabilized that node, making possible for the Sath the jump to Gamma Draconis.

[Dark Hunter]

The Terrans in particular were interested in it, since the technology could possibly restore the jump node to Earth.

[Stormkeeper]

The Knossos is also capable of snap-stablizing a jump node (non-canon), by self-detonating moments after arriving. The Shivan Lucifer-class superdestroyer also shows the capability to summon Knossos portals through subspace(non-canon). The Shivans seem to be capable of freely controlling the Knossos portals. It is also unknown how many exist.

Since they are of Ancient construction, and the Ancient empire speculatively encompassed most of the current Vasudan territory and other unknown systems, and the Ancients used them to stablize nodes. There are 5 known Knossos portals, including the destroyed one.

[Snail]

5 known?

[Stormkeeper]

Including the destroyed ones.

There's the gamma draconis one, the one the Sath came out from, and if i recall correctly there where 3? portals in the suicide mission with SOC.

[Snail]

No.

There are only three portals encountered by the GTVA:

Gamma Draconis - Nebula ('Knossos I'), destroyed in 'Flaming Sword'
Nebula - Binary System ('Knossos II')
Binary System - The Great Beyond^TM ('Knossos III')

Those are the only ones encountered by the GTVA.

[Stormkeeper]

.... My memory musta been hell rusty, then. I thought i remembered snipes saying 'look at that, knossos number 4'. Huh. I'm gonna go check it out...

-Must remember to dive-

Oh freaking A. My stats got wiped. I lost all my shiny medals, and i got busted back to ensign. =.=

I think it was one of the mods that wiped the slate. Freaking A.

[Bob-san]

There is occasional argument on whether the Knossos was a stabilizer or a destabilizer of jump nodes. I find it interesting that we have never jumped through a node, a Knossos being on the far side. I think that it is a destabilizer--an artificial lock on jump nodes setup by the Ancients to attempt to stop the Shivan advance...

[Sir T]

He said "Sathanas no. 4" Reffering to the one that got destroyed, the one that destroyed the Psamtic, the one that nearly splatted you on the way into the mission and the one that arrived while you were there.

[Stormkeeper]

There is occasional argument on whether the Knossos was a stabilizer or a destabilizer of jump nodes. I find it interesting that we have never jumped through a node, a Knossos being on the far side. I think that it is a destabilizer--an artificial lock on jump nodes setup by the Ancients to attempt to stop the Shivan advance...

IMO, its both. It can probably stabilize or destabilize a node. Its presumably the same process, just in reverse, for destablizing. But i seriously doubt they were built to function as destabilizers. Look at it this way, that portal can't be built in a few weeks. Assuming they are meant to destabilize. The only threat the Ancients had were the Shivans. The Shivans wiped them out pretty damn fast, added to the fact that the Ancients committed themselves to attacking the Shivans initially. Assuming that the battles went the way of the GTVA's initially contact with Shivans, they'd probably lost a good deal of their forces in the opening days of the war. Then after that they're retreating. If there would be a place to put a destablilzer, would be to the node(s) leading to their homeworld.

@Sir T
I pretty sure he said something about another portal... Oh well. I've been spamming the mods lately, my memory probably blended it in with a mod.

[Bob-san]

As they would--the fact that the Altair ruins in the FS1 Monologues state that they're leaving the system (they said they would fall back and try to defend--perhaps the Knossos was an attempt to defend) suggest to me that T/V space was Ancients space--as the Ancients retreated, the Shivans followed. Shivans attack, Ancients defend, Ancients retreat. Rinse and repeat.

We know that the Ancients used to have a presence beyond Capella, Gamma Draconis, the Nebula, and the Binary System--that suggests to me that the T/V space was a central hub of Ancient space. It is likely much of Ancients space was evacuated, they left in various directions. I think it's suggested that their homeworld was beyond Ross 128. They built a Knossos, defended as well as they could, and activated the Knossos once defeat was unstoppable. That would lock the Shivans from leaving the system and preventing more from entering later. I think the node-map suggests that the average system has 3 to 4 jump nodes... on that, why would some more-outer systems be lacking in a node? Look at and beyond Ross 128, Mirfak, Regulus, and Aldebaran... they are seemingly lacking jump nodes.

I think it's possible that the Ancients ended up mass-producing the various parts of Knossos portals--the 4 "large" portions and the four "small" portions are all seemingly the same--they could produce those parts quickly and more easily then warships that will be destroyed quickly. They would refine the design after every Knossos device ended up failing. The Shivans continue the assult, the Ancients continue setting up and properly calibrating the Knossos devices.

One last thing, Stormkeeper, they kept retreating from hundreds of systems. The GTVA had about 30 systems... the Ancients had to have had at least 100--I'd think more-accurately that they'd have 500! T/V space had to have at least a few Ancients outposts. Upon the invasion and destruction of the Binary system (leading to their core systems), they likely setup more Knossos, in advance. Once they construct the devices, they would likely calibrate them to work properly. In their haste, they failed to calibrate all the Knossos devices to seal the nodes. Once the Shivans would break though (the monologue suggests to me that the Ancients had the ability to block nodes from the Shivans for a length of time, perhaps a year or more, as they fell back) the node, they moved back. The three nodes we see in most of the game is a last-ditch effort to stall the Shivans long enough to evacuate the core systems. Upon evacuation, chaos likely broke out. Many Ancients tried to return to the core systems and make a run to the homeworld. Others disagreed on where to go--they split up and went to many systems. They end up constructing several more Knossos to close the path to them.

[brandx0]

I'd just like to note that this thread has an aweful lot of speculation and "IIRC"s and "IMHO"s with little actual facts to back any of these theories up. 

[Snail]

I'd just like to note that this thread has an aweful lot of speculation and "IIRC"s and "IMHO"s with little actual facts to back any of these theories up. 

Yeah, you're just confusing Colonel Cool.

[wtf_cl0vvn]

I'd just like to note that this thread has an aweful lot of speculation and "IIRC"s and "IMHO"s with little actual facts to back any of these theories up. 

That's very odd: considering the OVERABUNDANCE of canonical information, we should have little to no speculation...

Of course we have to speculate.

[Snail]

We do not need to speculate. It is clear why the Knossos' are needed.

[Bob-san]

I don't see why they are actually needed. Remember all the information given in FS2 are speculation about Knossos. All we are really told is that "activating" a Knossos allows you to traverse a subspace node. I think that it's actually more the opposite--it is really deactivating a Knossos allows you to traverse a node. We don't know quite a few things about how they work and why there were really build. We don't know if a Knossos can make a brand spankin' new node out of nothing, or if it requires a template to properly work. We don't know if the Ancients used them to supplement ease of travel or suspend travel altogether. If the Ancients homeworld was somewhere beyond Ross 128, sealed off, it is possible that the Lucifer broke the seal (or the seal degrades after ~10,000 years) and we were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, or if the Shivans were hunting for the Ancients or for us. I say that they're seals on the nodes because we have never jumped though (or been told of) a new or unknown subspace node and seen a Knossos after we exit--it's always been going through the Knossos in the first place, then jumping back was possible. If using the Knossos device unlocked the node for a period of time, that would explain why only then the Shivans came into Gamma Draconis (after being disturbed by the Trinity)... the node was able to be traversed only after the Knossos was (de)activated. It also explains why the Shivans started fighting in Ross 128 in FS1 and from the Nebula beyond Gamma Draconis later. Not to mention it justifies the theory that says the Lucifer fleet was a rogue Shivan fleet... cut-off from other Shivans.

EDIT: I was just thinking... even if the Trinity had to use the Knossos to pass to the nebula, isn't it possible that, even with the Knossos (and operating on the same idea as with a possible Knossos sealing Ross 128 off from the Ancients homeworld), the Knossos became useless? The device was destroyed from the outside, not collapsed from the inside (like we did every other time, from the Lucifer to the Bastion)... it's possible that the effects of the Knossos being (de)activated or allowed the node to remain stable for some time after, or that the seal degraded after ~10,000 years. Either way--33 years between the Lucifer and the Sathani is plausable to how long it takes for a Knossos seal to degrade... +/- 100 years on that scale isn't really all that much inaccuracy.

[TrashMan]

There is NO evidence whatsoever in FS2 that Knossos works as a desitablisier.

The science team examinating it gave a preliminary report and clearly stated it's purpose.

[Shade]

To clear up a few things:

There are 3 known Knossos portals. The "Knossos number three" referred to in "Into the Lion's Den" is not the 3rd portal found in that mission, it's the 3rd portal found, period. There is never any reference to finding a first and a second portal in that mission. So it is three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number of portals, and the number of portals shall be three... well, you get the idea

Moving on, there is one significant piece of evidence suggesting that first portal found (in Gamma Draconis) was deactivated while the node was closed, rather than being active and keeping it closed. The science vessel GTSC Erikson had visited the system previously and did not notice the portal - Petrarch himself suggests that the reason for this oversight was that the portal was inactive, and certainly given the size and amount of constantly moving objects of the portal as we know it, it seems reasonable that had it been this way when the Erikson visited, it would have been found.

Another piece of evidence against it being a "plug" is that there's a far simpler, much faster and just as effective way of blocking a node than building a Knossos with that presumed function. All you have to do is set off a big enough explosion inside it, something the Ancients surely would have been capable of, and something which, unlike a Knossos, you would actually have time to implement as a defensive measure if you got into trouble.

And finally:

I find it interesting that we have never jumped through a node, a Knossos being on the far side.

But we have. Frequently. How did we get back from "Into the Lion's Den", for example? We jumped through a node with an active Knossos on the other side