[Bob-san]

Well we all know about canon FS1 and FS2. Here's a short theory of "what happens and why?"

So in FS1, we find the Lucifer. The Lucifer was a major force to be reckoned with because it was so well defended. Outside of bombarding other capital ships and planetary surface settlements, the Lucifer could be called a well-defended joke. Here's a thought. What if the Lucifer was part of a mining fleet? Ships like a Demon and a Sathanas are unnaturally "fat"; what if a Lucifer's purpose was to prep systems for mining? For example, the Lucifer samples a star system and makes a decision; should we or should we not set this system up for (gas?) mining? They pulverize all opposition and call in the Sathanas fleet to force the main star to go supernova prematurely, releasing large amounts of gas and shattering the various planets in that system. By use of the four main beams, they destroy and then mine the planets, collecting large chunks and opening the juggernaught for transport. They then jump out and the material is either processed in the Sathanas (perhaps spawning into other Shivan /things/)? That'd keep the Shivans strong while making them wanderers of sort. If the Knossos took months or years to seal a jump node to the point that not even Shivans can jump directly out (and we mistook the "inactive" Knossos for an active seal, finally reaching peak strength millennia later), then perhaps the Sathanas fleet has been "waiting" and harvesting other systems they managed to reach--thus the partially destroyed planet deep in Shivan territory and the nebula past Gamma Drax.

[General Battuta]

There's a partially destroyed planet deep in Shivan territory?

Nothing in FS canon indicates the Shivans are interested in planets except as places to exterminate. Were the Lucifer a mining vessel, why would it go for the homeworlds?

[Klaustrophobia]

better question, how did the lucifer even know which planets were the homeworlds?  that wasn't ever even touched in cannon.  we went from "we have no reason to believe the shivans know the location of our home system" to "this is not the direct route to sol, which should divert the shivans from our true intent" to "the shivans have finally determined the location of sol".
 

[Paladin327]

one of the command briefings stated that the shivans are more interested in controlling individual jump nodes and not in planets and their resources

[Bob-san]

If memory serves, in part of the GTVI Branch Pt2, there's a lava planet in the background. Now what is interesting is perspective; we don't know what's going through the Shivan's heads. They attacked us and attacked valuable resources to us. That, combined with the Sathanas animation (with the "arms" bending) makes it seem like the ship's getting ready to do more than just fire a few beams. Now we presume that they have no interest in /our/ resources but let's face it; 80+ Sathanas juggernauts had to come from /somewhere/, in addition to the fighters and bombers they throw away like garbage. Add to that the fact that their small ships all use the same primary weapons (various strengths, of course) and, to me, it says that they have the ability to either produce their own ships rapidly OR they can afford to throw away all the ships that they do. Plus, we have difficulty targeting precisely where various Shivan ships are at any given time. Part of that is probably military intelligence (it's not like there are any known sympathetic Shivans) but part of that may be that, the majority of the time, they're hiding away somewhere hostile, and remote.

[General Battuta]

If they want resources only they have no reason to come to inhabited space.

It's basically 100% confirmed canonically that the Shivans are xenocidal (re: techroom entry.) Could be an in-universe assumption, but...

Gonna need a screenshot on the alleged lava planet. I don't remember any such thing.

[Droid803]

I don't recall any lava planet in the retail planet textures.

[Bob-san]

If they want resources only they have no reason to come to inhabited space.

It's basically 100% confirmed canonically that the Shivans are xenocidal (re: techroom entry.) Could be an in-universe assumption, but...

Gonna need a screenshot on the alleged lava planet. I don't remember any such thing.

You may be right actually; I haven't installed FSO or played it in months. I do remember there being "lava" planets somewhere--maybe Gamma Drax (which is awful close to "Shivan territory" and the system barren).

And that's my thought; the Shivans are after /something/ and I don't think pure xenocide is it. The tech difference and similarities between the two or three fleets could be explained by having different purposes. Perhaps the Lucifer was JUST to destroy the Ancients or some other race, but then the question would become "how did they get beams?" We equipped them and they adapted. They pummeled Vasuda Prime and seemingly want to try to pummel Earth. Still, on a whole, the GTVA is ineffective against Shivans first by technology and then by numbers. Ships like a Moloch, a Demon, or a Sathanas are enormous for their seeming purpose, especially when Shivan cruisers are so small. Add to that how varied the Shivan destroyers are; neither Ravana nor Lucifer had as much volume as a Demon. Similarly, the Sathanas is huge compared to the GTVA Watergun. It's fairly obvious that either the GTVA is a small theater of war for the Shivans (one of many?) or that the Shivans are moving huge populations and destroying stars, for fun and sport, to do so. There are very few things a Sathanas would be good for. Unless it's a hollow hull with a big bloody reactor to power the beams, then there'd be a LOT of extra space that could be used for storage or manufacturing.

[High Max]

Maybe he is referring to the scratched up planet beyond Knossos 2 that is grey and dead, but I think I saw that same planet texture in GTVA space.

Also, a more fitting place for this, though I said this in the other thread:

As for my assumptions in my earlier post: I go by the most likely assumption based on the story line and tech description of the Shivans and what I think makes sense. If it wasn't true, then why would Volition say 'hive' in the tech database? Just to make you wonder or just for kicks? Did it say 'could be' and then list other possibilities? The tech database said 'most likely' constructed by another entity too, and I like that idea, since it said 'most likely'. I don't think V would say it unless it had meaning to the story if it is being said in the tech database.

If they are from subspace and constructed by another entity in real space, maybe this other entity put subspace beings in machine bodies and this particular subspace (beings) are conscious, like spirits, or in scientific terms that seem close to the same thing, energy beings that can control bodies. So maybe we are fighting subspace itself but in the form of physical Shivans, 'shells' for these subspace beings that let them interact in real space in order to protect subspace from real space beings.


To add: Maybe one day a species entered subspace and encountered the pure subspace energy beings known as Shivans and somehow communicated with this species and said "if you build us some bodies and ships so we can enter the physical realm and can defend our subspace realm, we will give you 'whatever''. They did that and then the Shivans had some bodies  and ships in order to build even more bodies and ships for themselves, but they altered the original designs of their bodies and built their own ship designs after that.

[Timerlane]

It's basically 100% confirmed canonically that the Shivans are xenocidal (re: techroom entry.) Could be an in-universe assumption, but...

That the Shivans we ran into prior to FS2 appeared to be xenocidal.

We could say that Vasudans are hom(...er, whatever Latin genus Vasudans are)icidal, suicidal, and/or xenocidal, if they're judged based on the Hammer of Light.

Even if you don't buy the 'Gamma Draconis Knossos shutdown' isolation theory, it's always possible the Shivans aren't as unified as we think they are. They could have clans or factions(admittedly huge, if all 80+ Sathanes were all supposed to belong to the same group), each with their own versions of 'religion' or 'philosophy'.

[High Max]

It doesn't make sense for Shivans to have philosophy or religion. They do not think like humans. Just like Shivans don't get bored. Maybe the higher ups do to a certain extent though. It is stated that they think like a hive. The rest seem to be under the control of something higher up in the chain. Also, they are insectoid and we know that certain species of insects are hives. Look at the way the Shivans reacted after the destruction of the Lucifer according to canon.

[Stormkeeper]

High Max is right, we can't expect them to think like us. They are xenos, and we would do well not to believe that we are alike. They might have a religion or they might not. But as they are now, the Shivans appear only as the Great Devourer Destroyer, and there is little else to believe that they're not destroying the GTVA for lulz. The Ancient monologue hints that it was their arrogance in bringing wars to other systems that brought down the Shivans on them. They could be attack the Imperium GTVA for the same reasons, or for not.

[Bob-san]

Planet textures are, admittedly, generic. Adding in the right planet (as well as right size) can 'make or break' the atmosphere of a mission.

I don't know how much of the techroom descriptions we can really rely upon. I've always thought that the entire game & program are "running" while you're in the Ready Room, learning about your mission and (later) choosing your ship and weaponry. The mission ends and you return to your bunk or a bar or something, and life goes on. That means I include the Database section to be more "on duty" crap, including the information. If the Shivans didn't care about "us", why would they evac Bosch instead of just destroying his ship? If they were xenocidal, was it because they KNOW others are out there yet NONE of them ever even tried to communicate? We could be an "odd" race to them that they ran into twice. We could also be a statistical minority, along lists of races that survived our first War against them. There's just not enough double-checked information to call the Database correct. In the ships.tbl, the Shivan Comm Node was given a few words to describe what the designer or the person making that table thought about the ship and its purpose. The mission designer could have ask "what Shivan stuff have we NOT used yet?" and found that "comm node", and decided to use it because it looks cool and gives the player a diversion while in that mission.

As for the "Lucifier as center of a small hive" thing; who says they're a hive? As a real life example, Japanese worker's unions work to have the workers improve the company; work better with Management and you'll all be better off. Perhaps the Shivans just have blind faith in their leadership, and when said leadership is knocked out (ie: Lucifer destroyed), they just follow whatever order they last received OR take the most aggressive, most damaging path individually possible. It's like military with inexperienced direct leadership; a wide organization losing its central leadership would sort of spawn into dozens of divisions who can't agree on anything.

I'm not saying (or at least meaning) that the Shivans look, act, or speak like humans, just in costume (ehem, Star Trek). I'm imagining a few goals or objectives that any species might be interested in. One thing that everyone and everything seems to need is resources; energy or matter. Subspace, for us, is a long blue-white tunnel that takes a lot shorter a time to traverse than it could to slowboat it. Maybe the Shivans could manipulate subspace to manipulate time? On the other hand, they could have plenty of resources and ours don't matter, at all, to them. The fact that we can sort of "copy" Shivan tech says that's not the case either; we figure out what they're using and we appear to have enough stuff to make a copy.

[Timerlane]

It is stated that they think like a hive.
...
Look at the way the Shivans reacted after the destruction of the Lucifer according to canon.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Tech Database says it's a theory. Furthermore, it says they reacted to the destruction of the Lucifer; it didn't say how, exactly, and the canon Silent Threat campaign is barely coherent enough to gather anything about what happened to the remnants of the Lucifer fleet. Most people seem to believe they became more disorganized(or at least it's common Fanon).

Almost everything in the tech database is or can arguably be considered in-universe conjecture as far as the GTA/GTVA can figure out at the time.

'Philosophy' could be as simple as "we kill everything that might possibly be a threat" vs "we kill only whatever gets in our way", to their version of Nietzsche, Rousseau, or Freud. We just don't know.

[General Battuta]

The fact that they became disorganized after the destruction of the Lucifer is hard canon.

[TrashMan]

How did the shivies find Vasuda Prime and Earth? Being the homeworlds of both species, they are the most heavily populated, and thus have the most subspace and other activity (like radio emissions).

[Timerlane]

The fact that they became disorganized after the destruction of the Lucifer is hard canon.

Where? The tech database is the only place I remember any mention of it at all(outside ST:R), and I believe it's quoted on the Shivans FSWiki page.

A leading hypothesis is the hive mind theory, arguing that Shivan society is broken down in specialized functions driven by a collective intelligence. The most convincing evidence supporting this theory is the behavior of Shivan forces following the destruction of the SD Lucifer, the turning point of the Great War. Other experts caution against attributing insectoid properties to the Shivans, regardless of their appearance and behavior.

Nothing explicit; they reacted in some way, though I assume we're just supposed to connect the dots and assume they either went berserker/nuts or suddenly became stupid(since a major part of their theoretical "superbrain" just died), but nothing about canon ST seemed to suggest that.

Running over the Command Briefings for ST, and the best I recall, the Shivans:
1. Attacked you protecting the Einstein's escape pods(IIRC, including the use of Seraphim bombers, which admittedly is a little weird).
2. "decimated our forces in the Ikeya system. The enemy annihilated our installations and eighty percent of the fleet garrisoned in that sector", and disabled a science cruiser(the Ratna) carrying "cutting-edge weapon protoypes".
3. Still had a formidable "primary Shivan fleet", which the Hellfire cruiser group was attempting to rejoin and reinforce.
4.  Sent Seraphim bombers(and I believe some fighters) to attack the already-crippled Talus Mining Facility, which was also distracted by pirate attack.
5. Sent yet more fighters and bombers to attack an ultra-classified convoy(Iota), though to be fair, all they'd really have to do is distract you from shooting the insane homing asteroids.
6. Attacked or were attacked by GTI operations in Ross 128, with a Lilith and fighters, giving a pretty decent showing for itself against two Leviathans and their escort.
7. Still had a Cain to spare to guard a wing of freighters in next to last mission of ST, on a route with "heavy Shivan traffic".

Doesn't sound like they were all that brutallly crushed by the Lucifer's loss, or they adapted quickly enough.

[General Battuta]

Oh ye of little tech room reading!

The victory over the Lucifer had dealt the decisive blow. Incapable of coordinated strikes or strategic planning, the Shivans were outmaneuvered, isolated, and gradually destroyed. However, both species faced the challenge of rebuilding their interstellar societies from the ground up.

[Paladin327]

Theory: Shivan fighters/bombers are drones piloted by robots or expendable, for lack of better term following hive-mind theory, drones which are manufactured inside destroyers and supercapital ships, which could explain the endless hordes of fighters

[General Battuta]

We also know that Shivan fighter/bombers have pilots.