[Polpolion]

One Lucifer, eh? Hey, I'd have made that very same mistake. Why send more than one ship that's completely impervious to any weapons the enemy has?

[General Battuta]

All these stupid Alpha 1 jokes. People don't play on Insane enough.

[terran_emperor]

I do and get slaughtered in 10.95 seconds after the shooting begins

[Eishtmo]

The FS1 Tech Description makes you its *****. Which is a shame, because it's a pretty good run. :/

Clarify, because I'm not seeing what you're talking about.

[ShadowWolf_IH]

I've always been under the impression that destroying the ship in subspace isn't a problem, but destroying it as it leaves or enters subspace is what causes the collapse.  I remember the ending cutscene of the Lucy blowing up as she exits subspace,  but it's been so long since i played the fs2 campaign that I may be wrong about WHEN the Bastion detonated.  Was it in subspace, or leaving subspace?

I think that the lucy was a newer model than the  Sathanas, and was purpose built to avoid having to destroy an entire star system.  Maybe she was a prototype and when we destroyed her, the Shivans went back to doing things the old way.

[Rodo]

I've always been under the impression that destroying the ship in subspace isn't a problem, but destroying it as it leaves or enters subspace is what causes the collapse.  I remember the ending cutscene of the Lucy blowing up as she exits subspace,  but it's been so long since i played the fs2 campaign that I may be wrong about WHEN the Bastion detonated.  Was it in subspace, or leaving subspace?

I think that the lucy was a newer model than the  Sathanas, and was purpose built to avoid having to destroy an entire star system.  Maybe she was a prototype and when we destroyed her, the Shivans went back to doing things the old way.

You might be correct, the Bastion was just entering the subspace vortex when it exploded.

[Tantalus53]

And if you want to send in 20 Alpha 1's, why not make it realistic and have the Sathanas' (+100 of them, mind you) dump ALL THEIR FIGHTERS into the field. In a nutshell, Alpha 1 or not, in a war of atrittion, the shivans have us beat six ways to sunday.

[terran_emperor]

The Lucifer explodes halfway through the portal, as does the bastion in FS2. Both times closed the node. So id say thats the kicker.

Besides 3 Meson bombs on their own didnt affect the node (granted they were being used to demolish the knossoss, but apart from doing that, they didnt affect the node

[Dragon]

They weren't detonated in the corridor though, just close to it.

[Mongoose]

I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that detonating smack-dab in the middle of a subspace corridor is any different than detonating going into or out of either end.  In fact, I seem to remember the little wireframe render of the Nereid in the final FS2 command briefing being shown detonating in the middle itself.  The key seems to be being in the corridor to some degree.  The Lucifer only exploding as it was in the process of entering Sol was presumably more for dramatic cinematic effect than anything else, as were the Bastion's final moments.

The Lucifer fleet might have been a remnant of the armada that destroyed the Ancients, a custodian left behind to watch the development after, with no access to reinforcements. The actual Shivan Empire might not even have become aware of the Lucifer incident. By the time of FS2, the Lucifer model may be completely obsolete, or inadequate for combat (5 reactors to power the shields, two forward main cannons and by comparison weak secondary armament) and out of production and service since thousands of years, which may explain why they didn't send any in FS2.

This is the statement I agree with the most in here, I think.  There's no evidence to suggest that the Lucifer fleet and the Shivans we fought in FS2 ever had any contact with one another; in fact, I think there's a stronger picture painted of them being two completely separate entities, considering the inherent technological differences.  I've always taken the FS1 Shivan fleet to be the remnants (or more likely, the vast majority) of the fleet that destroyed the Ancients in the GTVA's part of space.  The Ancients presumably shut down their Knossos network in a last-ditch attempt to stem the Shivan invasion, but as we saw in FS2, that's not immediately effective.  So the Lucifer fleet waltzes in through the Gamma Draconis Knossos, mops up the Ancients, and then turns around...only to find that their way back has been cut off by the deactivated Knossos.  They then essentially sit around in some sort of hibernation state for a good 8,000 years, only to wake up when they detect a massive amount of subspace activity generated by Terran/Vasudan expansion and the 14-Year-War.  Cue the events of FS1.  By the time the Shivans enter through the Knossos in FS2, there's no trace of the FS1 fleet left, so the FS2 Shivans presumably didn't even know of the Lucifer's existence in the first place.

[NGTM-1R]

Clarify, because I'm not seeing what you're talking about.

These same cannons have been seen bombarding colonized worlds.

This appears before the attack on Vasuda Prime, and is plural.

[BengalTiger]

So the Lucifer fleet waltzes in through the Gamma Draconis Knossos, mops up the Ancients, and then turns around...only to find that their way back has been cut off by the deactivated Knossos.  They then essentially sit around in some sort of hibernation state for a good 8,000 years, only to wake up when they detect a massive amount of subspace activity generated by Terran/Vasudan expansion and the 14-Year-War.  Cue the events of FS1.  By the time the Shivans enter through the Knossos in FS2, there's no trace of the FS1 fleet left, so the FS2 Shivans presumably didn't even know of the Lucifer's existence in the first place.

That's one of the best theories I've read on this forum.

[Kolgena]

Heh. Following that, FS3 is set 3000 years into the future, when we suddenly stumble upon 80 slumbering Sathanases.

Just kidding.

That theory is quite good though, although I'm not exactly sure what would cause the Shivans to ditch the sheath shielding concept at all. If the SF Manticore design is as old as the Lucifer, why is it that the fighter is still around, but the Lucifer isn't? Even if no lucys were built anymore, there are still so many uses for sheath shielding that it doesn't make sense for Shivans to lose it. Sure, the tech was a huge energy hog, but it made you invulnerable to anything but beams (or something like that)... That's halfway to god mode.

It's like GTVA developing Meson bombs, then saying screw it, we're not using them anymore and will not research how to turn them into torpedoes. After we down half a dozen nodes, we'll chuck the plans in the trash, since they're completely useless now >.>

[ragingloli]

Well but shields are useless in subspace and when the ship explodes during transit, especially with 5 reactors (remember, they had to fill the Bastion's belly with Meson bombs to achieve the collapse) , the node collapses, which would quite suck for any Shivan invasion. Once the opponent starts exploiting that fact, if played right, a Shivan invasion could be stopped dead in its tracks in a few jumps. And the GTVA DID exploit it when they sealed off Capella. That strikes me as a massive strategic disadvantage to the whole concept, and I think the Shivans are smart enough to figure that out in 8000 years and ditch the concept. Maybe the Ancients themselves already exploited this fact when they closed the Knossos node in Gamma Draconis. This seems quite likely, considering how fast the node stabilised once the GTVA activated the portal, meaning when the Ancients opened it, and they had it open much longer as evidenced by the fact that they had enough time to build another Knossos in the Nebula (which I think the Shivans created by blowing up the star in that system, btw), they also had a stable node they had to collapse in order to stop the influx of Shivan warships. They may have destroyed one of the Shivan's Lucifer's, which they no doubt used for their invasion, in that node after the supernova. Either way, I think there is a solid enough rationale for the Shivans to abandon cap-ship-shields.

[Kolgena]

Maybe the Ancients themselves already exploited this fact when they closed the Knossos node in Gamma Draconis.

There is little left for us. Little time. But much irony.

We did discover they are not invulnerable. The destroyers that darkened our skies like a plague can be harmed. But we have no way to deliver the hurt.

We have the knowledge but not the means. And so this is our legacy. In subspace, they cannot use their shields. And into subspace they can be tracked.



I guess this cutscene can be interpreted many ways. If we are to say "no way to deliver the hurt" means that they couldn't kill anything in subspace even though they could track them there, then the Ancients would never have made the Shivans realize how dangerous it was to mount giant power plants on their destroyers.

On the other hand, a less obvious meaning might be that "but not the means" refers to the fact that their discovery was far too late, and therefore the Ancients no longer had the means to save their civilization from ruin.

I dunno. FS1 plot wasn't exactly airtight, so whatever. I do feel though that your theory is quite good.

[Mongoose]

I've generally taken the "no way to deliver the hurt" statement as meaning that the Ancient forces were decimated and scattered to the point that they simply had no means to launch any sort of credible attack on the Lucifer in subspace.  They knew exactly how to destroy it, but they simply didn't have the ships and weapons at-hand to do so.

[terran_emperor]

Thats the impression i got as well. That the ancients were at the point where just about all they had left was harsh language and prayer

[NGTM-1R]

I've generally taken the "no way to deliver the hurt" statement as meaning that the Ancient forces were decimated and scattered to the point that they simply had no means to launch any sort of credible attack on the Lucifer in subspace.  They knew exactly how to destroy it, but they simply didn't have the ships and weapons at-hand to do so.

The Shivan mistake in FS1 was to leave still-organized forces at their back. We have no real reason to believe Earth could have intercepted, so the assumption I make is that there was nothing left of the Ancients forces in a posistion to intercept. You can't tackle the Lucifier head-on. You have to get in behind hit. The Ancients couldn't; dead, scattered, out of contact, whatever. There will still solid forces in front of it...but they were no good there.

[Kosh]

I've generally taken the "no way to deliver the hurt" statement as meaning that the Ancient forces were decimated and scattered to the point that they simply had no means to launch any sort of credible attack on the Lucifer in subspace.  They knew exactly how to destroy it, but they simply didn't have the ships and weapons at-hand to do so.

I was generally under the impression that Ancient weaponry wasn't that spectacular, and instead they depended on overwhelming force to subdue their enemies.

[Mongoose]

Their weaponry probably was somewhere below the GTA and PVN's level by the end of the Great War, but I'd imagine that they had at least something that could have taken a hack at the Lucifer's reactors.