[TrashMan]

Ah, I understand it better then.

Are you talking about how compounds 'self-assemble'? This is being researched for nanomachines, protein folding, etc.

Yep, I seem to recall some research recently that made nano-wires that would actively seek out a particular chemical 'key', and each strand of the wire could be grown in such a way as it sought a different key from it's neighbours. Something like that could create massive reductions in the size production speed and costs of some technologies.

I had some scientist working on nano-technology holding lectures at my college. Nano-materials don't really "grow" in the exact meaning of the word.
that said, some of the properties are utterly fascinating.. did you know that by just twisting a carbon nano-tube slighly, you get it to change it's properties from non-conductive to conductive?

[Flipside]

Yup they have some pretty amazing qualities. I suppose 'grown' is the wrong word for it, it's sort of like a sugar crystal, you can 'grow' one, but all it is really doing is forming chemical bonds with all the saturated molecules, and because of it's properties, they can only form into one particular shape

[Woolie Wool]

Biological or organic structures?

I'm not sure what you mean. Organic materials can be artificially fabricated. The Ferrari Enzo's carbon fiber bodyshell is organic but it is entirely artificial and constructed, with no living components. What's really under debate is the idea that Shivan ships are essentially based on biological creatures that are grown into spaceships, which is absurd.

[Asuko]

Ah, so that's where all of this confusion arose from: whether the Shivan ships were actual organisms 'grown' into ships or whether they were organics, metal, and a Shivan integrated into it.

I personally believe in the latter, like you do.

[Mura]

Well, the idea of living ships has been used before, anyone remember farscape? The Moya was pretty much alive, it even gave birth to a ship! XD

Why the hell not? why is it too difficult to believe it could be done? I don't actually know, and i am not looking for an answer from anyone, i guess i just like my sci-fi with a touch of fantasy 

[Woolie Wool]

Biological structures are fragile compared to artificial materials designed for strength, and must be supplied with oxygen or other cellular fuel through a complex and delicate circulatory system. They are very slow growing (100m redwoods take centuries to grow to full size), are difficult to repair--biological self-repair is very slow and the results are often inferior to the original, consume vast amounts of energy and resources in the process of growing (assuming a child consumes an average of 1750 calories a day, he will have consumed over 48 gigajoules by the time he turns 18. That's a LOT of energy to make a 150-pound object, the equivalent of more than 10 tons of TNT), are prone to mutation and diseases, and have too much variation between specimens.

Yes, the idea of creature ships has been used and abused before, and is one of the most obnoxious clichés in sci-fi. I think the meme comes from the misconception that because biological organisms are mysterious, complicated, and nearly impossible to fully repair when they break, they perform better. Shoot a big-bore rifle at an elephant and at an 8-ton armored car and see which one ends up in better shape and which one gets repaired faster.

[terran_emperor]

Organic Living spaceships do seem absurd at aou current level of Technologybut given some time, say 1,000,000 years, it wont. Its the holy grail of Technology. I mean sometimes the organic vesion of something is superior to the Mechanical version - Ie computers vs the brain/We repair faster (and in some cases better) than a car or building.

Also, Living doesnt necessarily equate alive-(read thinking). I mean The human(/Vasudan/fox/cat/Um...er...Whatever) body is living, but it is the Brain that makes them truly alive. In a sense, the brain is the Pilot in the fighter...

A lot of what follows is my own speculation

I think that Shivan Vessels are like a cross between Terminator (T-800 series Model 101 (The Arnold Skinjob)), the Borg and Xenomorphs from  Alien Quadrilogy.

They have basic mechanical endoskeleton includes some corridoors (Remember, we only see one)(Say I was the Transport and where the shivans landed was my left collar bone. Now say that collar bone was held together with a specially grown skin.-Terminator.

The Skin once grown, hardens like acrusta- (Cant spell it) - Lobster or Crab shell
In the toughest places, this skin-shell is left unarmoured. But in Thinly covered places it is re-enforced with armour. Also, the skin is covered in a variaty other instuments. - The Borg

Interior is a mix of organic and mechanical Tech. Design in mechanical looks like a warped version of normal mechanics on terran ships. Interior design in the organic area is something by Geiger

Wiring and power-conduits are a mix of organic and mechanical. (Nerves connect to cappacitors, Veins/Arteries connect to mechanical piston pumps <- that sort of thing

The skin and endo-skelleton are capable of growing over the course of years (Much like our skin grows). Think of them being abit like Time-lord Regeneration for how the - only they take about a year to complete

The organic hulls are able to heal over time. (This offers an explanation to something in-game...In the mission where you have to destroy the Sathanas' main beam cannons, I managed, without cheats, to get the Sathanas down to 87% hull...In the next mission, High Noon, The Sathanas was back up to 92% hull. The amount of time between the two missions didnt seem long enough to justify a repair crew...so ipostulate organic healing)

The organic parts thrive on either nebula gas, or the energy emitted around subspace nodes...(Hey for all we know, it could be Shivan's Catnip

Growth occurs in major spurts every few hundred years. Ships which have just had a growth spurt or are in the middle between spurts are put into combat duty. The spend years  practically unchanged apart from small differences, like weapons and the nerve/wiring configuration

When a ship is about to have a growth spurt or is having one, it is withdrawn from service and kept at a drydock. The armour is removed and refitted after the growth is complete

Cains would grow first grow tougher, developing into Liliths

Liliths grow in size and shape developing into a stop-gap ship, which I shall refer to as a Lilin (Look it up) (note: this ship is one ive created, otherwise the Evolution of a Lilith into Demon Doesn't make a whole lotta sense)

Lilins look like a cross between a Demon and a Lilith. The exact look of a lilin i haven't decided, but imagine a corvette that looks half-way between a Lilith and a Demon, and you'll have some idea of what it would look like - i might do a sketch some time and ask someone to model it.

The Lilin Eventually grows into a Demon.

Demons then grow into another stop-gap I'll call the Archdemon (again ive created this ship for reasons of pure sense)
Archdemons are a half-way between a Demon and a Lucifer.

The handfull of Archdemons that survive long enough then grow into Lucifers

The few Lucifers that survive to old age then become something else - juggernaut that looks Luciferish (Hey, the ravana destroyer looks Sathanasish)

***Cookie to the person who find the pattern in the nomenclature and for those who got my joke earlier in the post***

Something similar happens along the Rakshassa line, culminating in the Sathanas

That is my opinion. You guys are all free to "believe whatever you want to believe"

[Admiral_Stones]

Organic Living spaceships do seem absurd at aou current level of Technologybut given some time, say 1,000,000 years, it wont. Its the holy grail of Technology. I mean sometimes the organic vesion of something is superior to the Mechanical version - Ie computers vs the brain/We repair faster (and in some cases better) than a car or building.

Also, Living doesnt necessarily equate alive-(read thinking). I mean The human(/Vasudan/fox/cat/Um...er...Whatever) body is living, but it is the Brain that makes them truly alive. In a sense, the brain is the Pilot in the fighter...

A lot of what follows is my own speculation

I think that Shivan Vessels are like a cross between Terminator (T-800 series Model 101 (The Arnold Skinjob)), the Borg and Xenomorphs from  Alien Quadrilogy.

They have basic mechanical endoskeleton includes some corridoors (Remember, we only see one)(Say I was the Transport and where the shivans landed was my left collar bone. Now say that collar bone was held together with a specially grown skin.-Terminator.

The Skin once grown, hardens like acrusta- (Cant spell it) - Lobster or Crab shell
In the toughest places, this skin-shell is left unarmoured. But in Thinly covered places it is re-enforced with armour. Also, the skin is covered in a variaty other instuments. - The Borg

Interior is a mix of organic and mechanical Tech. Design in mechanical looks like a warped version of normal mechanics on terran ships. Interior design in the organic area is something by Geiger

Wiring and power-conduits are a mix of organic and mechanical. (Nerves connect to cappacitors, Veins/Arteries connect to mechanical piston pumps <- that sort of thing

The skin and endo-skelleton are capable of growing over the course of years (Much like our skin grows). Think of them being abit like Time-lord Regeneration for how the - only they take about a year to complete

The organic hulls are able to heal over time. (This offers an explanation to something in-game...In the mission where you have to destroy the Sathanas' main beam cannons, I managed, without cheats, to get the Sathanas down to 87% hull...In the next mission, High Noon, The Sathanas was back up to 92% hull. The amount of time between the two missions didnt seem long enough to justify a repair crew...so ipostulate organic healing)

The organic parts thrive on either nebula gas, or the energy emitted around subspace nodes...(Hey for all we know, it could be Shivan's Catnip

Growth occurs in major spurts every few hundred years. Ships which have just had a growth spurt or are in the middle between spurts are put into combat duty. The spend years  practically unchanged apart from small differences, like weapons and the nerve/wiring configuration

When a ship is about to have a growth spurt or is having one, it is withdrawn from service and kept at a drydock. The armour is removed and refitted after the growth is complete

Cains would grow first grow tougher, developing into Liliths

Liliths grow in size and shape developing into a stop-gap ship, which I shall refer to as a Lilin (Look it up) (note: this ship is one ive created, otherwise the Evolution of a Lilith into Demon Doesn't make a whole lotta sense)

Lilins look like a cross between a Demon and a Lilith. The exact look of a lilin i haven't decided, but imagine a corvette that looks half-way between a Lilith and a Demon, and you'll have some idea of what it would look like - i might do a sketch some time and ask someone to model it.

The Lilin Eventually grows into a Demon.

Demons then grow into another stop-gap I'll call the Archdemon (again ive created this ship for reasons of pure sense)
Archdemons are a half-way between a Demon and a Lucifer.

The handfull of Archdemons that survive long enough then grow into Lucifers

The few Lucifers that survive to old age then become something else - juggernaut that looks Luciferish (Hey, the ravana destroyer looks Sathanasish)

***Cookie to the person who find the pattern in the nomenclature and for those who got my joke earlier in the post***

Something similar happens along the Rakshassa line, culminating in the Sathanas

That is my opinion. You guys are all free to "believe whatever you want to believe"

BTW: It's spelled Giger, not Geiger
Was that your joke?

[FreeSpaceFreak]

The Lilin are the daughters of Lilith, and they're demons. Very good name
But I was wondering why we haven't encountered any Lilin or Archdemons during FS1...

I've been playing with the idea that the Shivans use (partly) biological subsystems and/or weapons in 'normal' ships. Biological systems, as terran_emperor said, are mostly superior to non-biological systems (compare the central nervous system to the internet, for example), and the Shivans could be using biological reactors, beam turrets, neural-network AI, etc. etc. etc. That would explain how they get all this power in that tiny Lilith, for example... Imagine the GTVA doing something like that...

[Woolie Wool]

Organic Living spaceships do seem absurd at aou current level of Technologybut given some time, say 1,000,000 years, it wont. Its the holy grail of Technology. I mean sometimes the organic vesion of something is superior to the Mechanical version - Ie computers vs the brain/We repair faster (and in some cases better) than a car or building.

Modern computers are in no way comparable to a human brain. They function and process data in entirely different ways. Furthermore, computer technology is advancing exponentially, and together with quantum and massively parallel computing, will result in artificial computers with the computing power of a human brain within a few decades. Also, we do not repair faster or better than an artificial object. Human self-repair sucks. Most damaged tissues are replaced by largely nonfunctional material called scar tissue when they are damaged. Scar tissue is basically like biological Bondo. It is relatively weak, inflexible, and does not contribute to the functioning of organs. It does not resist infection well when replacing skin, either. Many wounds or lesions can take months to finish healing, and the repaired stuctures are always inferior to what they once were. But wait, it gets even better. Many parts of our bodies cannot repair at all! If you suffer brain damage, the damaged brain tissue is gone. If heart muscle dies, it is not replaced. If your spinal cord is severed it cannot reconnect. And severe enough injuries can cause you to die. If a car's engine block cracks, the engine can be replaced. If a window is smashed, the pane can be replaced. If body panels rust and develop holes. new metal can be welded in place. For a car to be totaled means the damage costs more to repair than the vehicle is worth, not that it cannot be repaired.

]Also, Living doesnt necessarily equate alive-(read thinking). I mean The human(/Vasudan/fox/cat/Um...er...Whatever) body is living, but it is the Brain that makes them truly alive. In a sense, the brain is the Pilot in the fighter...

This is complete fabrication. Insects, trees, and bacteria are just as alive as you are. Human beings are the only creatureso n the entire planet capable of full conscious thought. Are animals not alive despite their inability to think? Your idea is the old body/soul duality dressed up in "scientific" clothes.

A lot of what follows is my own speculation

I think that Shivan Vessels are like a cross between Terminator (T-800 series Model 101 (The Arnold Skinjob)), the Borg and Xenomorphs from  Alien Quadrilogy.

They have basic mechanical endoskeleton includes some corridoors (Remember, we only see one)(Say I was the Transport and where the shivans landed was my left collar bone. Now say that collar bone was held together with a specially grown skin.-Terminator.

The majority of Shivan textures look metallic. The plates have lots of straight lines or curves so regular that they would've had to have been cut to spec using fabrication equipment. Even when you take the spec maps away, many ships have metallic highlights in the textures. The "shell" texxtures of the Demon and Ravana have corrosion, a feature of artificial materials.

The Skin once grown, hardens like acrusta- (Cant spell it) - Lobster or Crab shell
In the toughest places, this skin-shell is left unarmoured. But in Thinly covered places it is re-enforced with armour. Also, the skin is covered in a variaty other instuments. - The Borg

Except the textures look like metal, not chitin or other proteins. The red parts have a distinct crystalline look, which is definitely not biological.

Interior is a mix of organic and mechanical Tech. Design in mechanical looks like a warped version of normal mechanics on terran ships. Interior design in the organic area is something by Geiger

The hallfight cutscene is rather murky, but there is nothing Giger-like about it.

Wiring and power-conduits are a mix of organic and mechanical. (Nerves connect to cappacitors, Veins/Arteries connect to mechanical piston pumps <- that sort of thing

Biological circulatory vessels are extremely delicate, nowhere near tough enough to withstand the amount of energy that would surge through an FS fighter (keep in mind that the guns on an FS fighter are equivalent to small nuclear devices--they're extremely powerful). Also, please stop confusing biological with organic. A carbon-fiber sports car bidy is organic, but it was molded, not grown.

The skin and endo-skelleton are capable of growing over the course of years (Much like our skin grows). Think of them being abit like Time-lord Regeneration for how the - only they take about a year to complete

I don't think you understand how slow growing is. It takes CENTURIES for a large tree to grow. Even the largest trees are no taller than the length of a Satis.

The organic hulls are able to heal over time. (This offers an explanation to something in-game...In the mission where you have to destroy the Sathanas' main beam cannons, I managed, without cheats, to get the Sathanas down to 87% hull...In the next mission, High Noon, The Sathanas was back up to 92% hull. The amount of time between the two missions didnt seem long enough to justify a repair crew...so ipostulate organic healing)

Healing is extremely slow and in most complex organisms, imperfect. The disparity between hull strengths in those two missions is impossible to justify and can only be attributed to an error in the game.

The organic parts thrive on either nebula gas, or the energy emitted around subspace nodes...(Hey for all we know, it could be Shivan's Catnip

What is this "energy" emitted around subspace nodes?

Growth occurs in major spurts every few hundred years. Ships which have just had a growth spurt or are in the middle between spurts are put into combat duty. The spend years  practically unchanged apart from small differences, like weapons and the nerve/wiring configuration

When a ship is about to have a growth spurt or is having one, it is withdrawn from service and kept at a drydock. The armour is removed and refitted after the growth is complete

Cains would grow first grow tougher, developing into Liliths

This would make the growing of ships even slower. We're talking centuries here--so slow it's just not worth it to create ships this way.

Liliths grow in size and shape developing into a stop-gap ship, which I shall refer to as a Lilin (Look it up) (note: this ship is one ive created, otherwise the Evolution of a Lilith into Demon Doesn't make a whole lotta sense)

Lilins look like a cross between a Demon and a Lilith. The exact look of a lilin i haven't decided, but imagine a corvette that looks half-way between a Lilith and a Demon, and you'll have some idea of what it would look like - i might do a sketch some time and ask someone to model it.

The Lilin Eventually grows into a Demon.

Why does it completely change configuration? Why haven't we seen these things?

Demons then grow into another stop-gap I'll call the Archdemon (again ive created this ship for reasons of pure sense)
Archdemons are a half-way between a Demon and a Lucifer.

The handfull of Archdemons that survive long enough then grow into Lucifers

The few Lucifers that survive to old age then become something else - juggernaut that looks Luciferish (Hey, the ravana destroyer looks Sathanasish)

***Cookie to the person who find the pattern in the nomenclature and for those who got my joke earlier in the post***

Something similar happens along the Rakshassa line, culminating in the Sathanas

That is my opinion. You guys are all free to "believe whatever you want to believe"

I prefer not to pull things out of my ass and invent new ship classes of which there is no evidence for. Why can't they just BUILD a Sathanas or Lucifer? It's a far more parsimonious theory than some missing-link ship class that no one has ever seen.

The Lilin are the daughters of Lilith, and they're demons. Very good name
But I was wondering why we haven't encountered any Lilin or Archdemons during FS1...

I've been playing with the idea that the Shivans use (partly) biological subsystems and/or weapons in 'normal' ships. Biological systems, as terran_emperor said, are mostly superior to non-biological systems (compare the central nervous system to the internet, for example), and the Shivans could be using biological reactors, beam turrets, neural-network AI, etc. etc. etc. That would explain how they get all this power in that tiny Lilith, for example... Imagine the GTVA doing something like that...

First of all, the brain is not a distributed network like the internet. The closest example to the internet might be a primitive invertebrate's nerve net, which is extremely rudimentary compared to a brain and has nowhere near the bandwidth of fiber optic connections. Neural-network AI isn't biological either--it's a software theory. A neural network AI is a program that could run on a drytech computer. You want comparisons of biological and non-biological systems--try these:

Artery vs. oil pipeline. Lay an artery across the Alaskan tundra and watch it freeze and die.
Teeth vs. grinder. Whirling blades don't get cavities and they can dice up things that a human could never chew.
Chobham armor vs. tree bark.
Automobile vs. horse. Hardly anyone owns a horse anymore.
Synthetic morphine vs. opium. The former makes you a lot higher than the latter.

EDIT: And let's not forget--how would Terran weapons and electronics work with all this biological crap?

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Several computer scientists are combining synthetic chips and biological nerve cells to improve computing tech. Others try to synthetically reproduce muscles. They don't just do that for fun, right?

The comparisons you're giving don't quite make sense. The artery didn't evolve to lay across the Alaskan tundra. The artery has evolved to work ideally in normal circumstances (i.e. in a living body). A pipeline is designed specifically to do its job somewhere else. As for the rest of your comparisons. BTW, endorphins work even better than synthetic morphine.

The red parts have a distinct crystalline look.

Do they? They could as well be biological, especially since we do not know a thing about "life, but not as we know it".

[Woolie Wool]

Ever heard of neural-network AI, Woolie? Computer scientists are quite busy researching that, since they think it would lead to better computers. Heck, they're even combining synthetic chips and biological nerve cells to improve computing tech.
It's all about AI and the ability to learn. Quantum and massively parallel computing, as you call it, will work as fast as a human brain, I agree, but will it work as good as a human brain? Your supercomputer would still be using pre-programmed rules, and that's just not comparable to learning things. Look at the tech room description of the GTSG Alastor, for example. They didn't use quantumcomputers there, did they? At least in the FS universe, this biological computing works.

The red parts have a distinct crystalline look.

Do they? They could as well be biological, especially since we do not know a thing about "life, but not as we know it".

I said that Neural Network AI is a software theory. The neurons in an Alastor's neural network could be quantum processors. The same principles that apply to a human brain could be applied to quantum processing units or virtual processors running on a single quantum computer, with the same results.

As for the "biological living crystals" part, demonstrate a plausible glowing crystal life form if you want to make that assertion. Meanwhile I could bore a hole in a piece of quartz and stick a red LED inside it and get a glowing red crystal.

[ShadowGorrath]

I'm probably late to say this , but :

Cain -> Lilith -> Rakshassa -> Ravana -> Lucifer -> Sathanas

Lucifer losses shields , because the Sathanas is too big for those reactors to shield it .

OR

Cain -> Lilith -> Moloch -> Demon

BUT , I don't think their tech is organic or biological at all . I prefer to think that their ships are simply made of very resistant armour and a lot of regular metal inside . That's all

[FreeSpaceFreak]

As for the "biological living crystals" part, demonstrate a plausible glowing crystal life form if you want to make that assertion. Meanwhile I could bore a hole in a piece of quartz and stick a red LED inside it and get a glowing red crystal.

We don't even know if they are crystals. They could be, yes, but they could be anything else... Something we do not know about .
It's behaviour when the Saths blow up Capella seems pretty alien to me... Not like any red LEDs in crystals would do, anyway

[Snail]

IMO, the growth lines theory was stupid, because they all look exactly the same, there are no intermediate stages between a Lilith, and say, a Moloch.

[Woolie Wool]

As for the "biological living crystals" part, demonstrate a plausible glowing crystal life form if you want to make that assertion. Meanwhile I could bore a hole in a piece of quartz and stick a red LED inside it and get a glowing red crystal.

We don't even know if they are crystals. They could be, yes, but they could be anything else... Something we do not know about .
It's behaviour when the Saths blow up Capella seems pretty alien to me... Not like any red LEDs in crystals would do, anyway

Do you think the red crystals caused the supernova to go off rather than the wacky subspace fields? As for it looking "alien", yeah, it's alien. The Shivans are alien; they're three-legged monsters with bladed hands. That doesn't make Sathanas-class juggernauts living creatures.

[Snail]

Do you think the red crystals caused the supernova to go off?

It was a subspace disturbance. Maybe the crystals aligned themselves in such a way that they became conductors for the subspace weapon.

[Woolie Wool]

Do you think the red crystals caused the supernova to go off?

It was a subspace disturbance. Maybe the crystals aligned themselves in such a way that they became conductors for the subspace weapon.

Ah, but you see, you mentioned the subspace weapons. So the Sathanas-class juggernauts are living creatures because the big subspace weapon has red glowing crystal barrels. How does that work?

[Snail]

I never said anything about the Saths being living creatures. In fact I disagree with the statement that the Shivan ships are alive.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

I'm not saying they live either, and I'm definitely not saying they grow. I'm just saying that the Shivans use biological tech in their ships, as I stated above.

There must be a link between the red glow and the subspace stuff they have. Otherwise, it wouldn't make sense to use energy for lighting when you need that energy for wacky subspace fields.