[Mobius]

Flipside:

I don't know how the briefings can give informations regarding. MANY of the Shivan units that survived the Great War have been eliminated after the destruction of the Lucifer. Are you going to exclude/consider the presence of at least one more Demon and who knows how many cruisers?

The nebula was Shivan space? Shivan controlled space, but not something close to the core of the Shivans.

From the post above I assumed that you think consider the number of Shivan destroyers is very low. I'm sorry for any misunderstanding, as I said in my now nuked signature English is my third language blah blah blah...

nubbles526: Sometimes it's necessary.

Have you ever watched FS1_Endgame and Bosch's cutscenes? Do you know what they say about the Shivans? And what does the game experience suggest about the Shivans' fleet and their behaviour?

It think that mission would have been better with the Nebiros closing in from open space and the GTVA fighting hard to get the transports out of there in time...

[Dysko]

Take the US Army, if there was trouble with, say, Pirate activity near the coast of the US, would they pull a fleet back from the Gulf to deal with it, or simply dispatch the nearest home fleet?

The US Army doesn't control any fleet. The US Navy does
 
*runs*

[Mobius]

Pignolo Polentone!

The point is that we can't even discuss about Shivan systems and what makes a Shivan system "one of their main systems".

[Flipside]

@Dysko : Picky Git

@Mobius

As for Shivan Space, maybe they just didn't want us nosing around in there, as you say, there's no telling whether one of those Knossos devices didn't lead to the very heart of the Shivan 'race', or something similar, maybe that's what the Ancients did, found an unstable node, fixed it, and then found out they'd opened the door to their own destruction.

Either way, consider the Falkland Isles in the UK, I won't try and go into the political aspect, but no-one even knew where the damn isles were before Libya invaded it, but we had to respond in kind, regardless of political pressures simply because it had to be shown that incursions would not be tolerated, even on islands in the ass-end of nowhere that are almost entirely populated by Sheep and Penguins.

Take the Lucifer, it's generally considered that the Lucifer was a very old ship, and yet it had shields, we call the Ravanna a new Destroyer class, but is it new to the Shivans? It could well be that the Ravanna and Demons out-date even the Lucifer, and they were, more or less, pulled out of a Mothball fleet just to deal with the GTVA nosing around in a Nebula in Shivan controlled space, most noticeably, blowing stuff up.

I think we can both agree that we can guess our way all over this, there's far too little information

[Koth]

Either way, consider the Falkland Isles in the UK, I won't try and go into the political aspect, but no-one even knew where the damn isles were before Libya invaded it, but we had to respond in kind, regardless of political pressures simply because it had to be shown that incursions would not be tolerated, even on islands in the ass-end of nowhere that are almost entirely populated by Sheep and Penguins.

  I must be missing something. I always thought it was Argentinia.

[Mobius]

Is "Picky Git" the English for "pignolo"?

[offtopic]Libya?

I can't consider the Falkland Isles in the UK in 2008. I don't even know why the rest of the world isn't doing something to strip the UK of its "colonies". The British Empire no longer exists, those territories are to be given to more legitimate owners. What a mistery...[/offtopic]

Well...about the other part of your post...there are many things to say. First of all, FreeSpace is a game. might have decided to come out with interesting designs like the Rakshasa, the Mara and the Ravana, because their modding abilities, their imagination and/or computers allowed to do it. They have also added a fearsome number of cruisers and beam cannons... Colony Wars 3 is the only game of that period in which warships had formidable anti fighter and anti bomber capabilities. There was the problem to make the "betterized stuff" fit in the Universe so the most common theory to explain this is that "the Ravana is more recent than the Demon". Shivan ships might be VERY old, but I don't want to invent theories to explain the obvious - made FS better without providing explanations, but people still talk about the classic "why do the Shivans in FS1 fights without beams?" and stuff like that...[/i]

I must be missing something. I always thought it was Argentinia.

Argentina. One of the most beautiful places of the world(until a few decades ago). The UK gave a "small" contribute to its downfall 

[Flipside]

Yup, Argentina, there's been so many little scuffles over the last 30 years, I lose track of who invaded where Libya had a bit of a face-off with Egypt, as well as a few other countries, so things got a bit confusing around that time.

[offtopic]As for British Colonies, ask an Australian, to be honest, being a British Colony is little more than a label anyway. The Falkland isles didn't request to be invaded.

The UK didn't contribute to the downfall in the slightest, the invasion of the Isles was an attempt to distract the populace from what was going on, it held no strategic or resource value for either side, it was just a convenient place for both countries to say 'My Dick is bigger than your Dick.'[/offtopic]

As for the main topic, yes, it's a game, that's why we are only theorising, attempting to extrapolate meaning from plot devices as it were It's always fun, but I gave up expecting it to be fruitful a long time ago

Edit: If you want a rather humorous look into English Colonialism during the Thatcher years, I suggest you watch 'Water' with Micheal Caine, not only is it pretty funny, but it gives a great window on how 'firmly' the British overlook their colonies

Edit: Yup, the Falkand war was '82, all the posing between the US and Libya was only a few years after.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Sdeng...FreeSpace it's a game, what's the point in taking part of a 20 seconds mission? And how can the GTVA evacuate the crew with the Nebiros in the area?

I know, but my point is that there wasn't even a Cain. A Cain would take ages to destroy it.

Take the US Navy, if there was trouble with, say, Pirate activity near the coast of the US, would they pull a fleet back from the Gulf to deal with it, or simply dispatch the nearest home fleet?

The USN carriers and other large ships are at the front line, the older ships are in the home fleet. So yes, they would dispatch the home fleet. Now if that was only their home fleet, I'm for their front line fleet.

Without any concept of Fleet Construction, Logistics, and Disposition of Shivan forces, we were fighting the war blind, I’m personally of the opinion that the Shivans could have rolled us over any time they particularly wanted to during the Second War, but for some reason they did not, possibly because they were busy elsewhere.

Exactly.

It seemed to me that, despite their obvious superiority, they weren’t fighting to defeat us, merely to close the door and possibly to send a message, that, in itself, poses some interesting hypothetical questions, because I don’t, for one moment, think they were nervous of us, even with the Colossus. they just, for some reason, couldn’t be bothered to deal with us.

And yet they sacrificed several juggs to clarify their message

[Flipside]

Losses almost never seem to mean anything to Shivans, once again, it's a murky area, could have been something as simply as malfunctions because they were older ships for all we knew, though that would kind of be an anti-climax, maybe it was just to symbolise their determination to defeat us, a lot of hive-mentality races will willingly sacrifice a massive portion of their population to defend a threatened nest. Ignore the whole 'nest' aspect and look at it in a larger term, and it could be explained that way.

[Mobius]

Well, sounds clear for me that the Shivans are the way too numerous to have one "main system". I don't believe in a Shivan fleet divided in clans, either. There aren't many Shivan-like species in sci-fi(eufemism), I can make some kind of comparison with Warhammer 40,000's Tyranids but it won't help me out in finding a solution.

They must be very well organized and programmed, which means that, I don't know, superdestroyers and juggernaut, can "replace" the Hive Mind when it is too far to give straight orders. So far we have never heard of Shivan "messengers" bringing orders to units fighting in the frontline.

[karajorma]

I think kara talked about some dire consequences if someone used that argument in a debate.

Actually I'm deadly serious. But it's not the phrase itself so much as the suggestion that certain topics aren't worth talking about cause it's just a game.

It's basically spamming if 10 people are debating a topic and someone comes along and tells them to stop because it's just a game. It doesn't add anything to the debate and if you aren't interested in the subject go read something else.

[Mobius]

This time was necessary. The Nebiros would have easily destroyed the Headquarters: its appeareance at the beginning of the mission would have been ridiculous.

Ok when finding solutions and theories but we can't forget that FS2 is a game. When people discussing Slaying Ravana talk about the number of GTVA bombers in that mission an "it's a game!" reply becomes obvious. Even in films and books there are "cool things to show", factions rarely go for the most logic solution, they always put up a show.

[karajorma]

This time was necessary.

Which is why you're still here.

[Mobius]

I know it perfectly

[TrashMan]

I still believe shivies had a lot more than what we saw (heard about).

I don't think all those fighters came only from the juggs - GTVA had a lot of destroyers and fight bases in the system, far better AAF defenses on it's ships.

Heck, Alpha 1 usually kills abut 1000 shivies (not counting all the shivan fighters that perish when you blow their destroyer before they got to launch)

[NGTM-1R]

Without any concept of Fleet Construction, Logistics, and Disposition of Shivan forces, we were fighting the war blind,

Ah, but that's why you look at comparative capablities, not just numbers.

[Flipside]

Exactly, if we get 80 Saths for sticking our nose in the door, what do we get for trying to trash the dining room?

[NGTM-1R]

Actually, what I meant was in terms of ships. We can't know how deep the Shivan fleet runs, but we can make a reasonable assumption that we've seen most of the types of craft they employ. So we can make reasonable assumptions about their state of technological progress relative to the GTVA.

[karajorma]

If you're saying that's a reasonable assumption then it follows that you're claiming the Moloch, Sathanas, Ravana and every other new class in FS2 is under 32 years old since we didn't see them in the 1st Great War.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Yep, during the Interbellum, we thought we had seen most of the types of craft they employ as well. That's why we (= the GTVA) came up with the Colossus, and we all know how that ended...