[General Battuta]

And the difference is, you kill off the species that are a threat to other species. The cooperative species get to live.

Putting everything else aside about Trash arguments, he does have a central point that should not be overlooked.

Preserving species you will later destroy is simply wasteful. If the Shivans were really in it to promote diversity, then an armed peacekeeper role and not a mysterious cosmic destroyer one is called for, and they need to intervene much earlier. It's not about morality; it's about efficency.

I'm not sure I get what you're saying. The Shivans preserve by destroying the 'sinners', as the Ancients put it. They don't actively go out and nurture new species. The destroyers are destroyed, and all the species that said destroyers would have wiped out instead get to grow up and take their turn at judgment.

In this theory, everybody gets a free ride up until the point where their attitude towards other species starts to matter - i.e. when they run into other species. The Shivans are a filter.

The first the Shivans probably notice of a species is when it starts using subspace travel. That's when it becomes a threat to create a galactic/intergalactic monoculture.

The Shivans don't need to evaluate all the nascent potentials on multiple worlds. They're not a terrestrial species. Suggesting that they intervene with pre-subspace cultures is like claiming we should extend our law enforcement to apes.

In short, the most efficient way for the Shivans to promote diversity is to wait for new starfarers to present themselves, give them a while to see how they act, and then either ignore them or throw a test their way.

[Lucika]

I am not 100% sure that the Ancient monologues (which form the basis for most of the ideas regarding the Shivans) are accurate. If we consider the first ancient monologue (and the astonished surprise in its voice when it says "they did not die") we can see that the Ancients have a rather... well, infantile and sometimes outright wrong (I mean, the ignorant way they are mystifying and talk about the fact that they are killing off races for almost no reason but to expand their empire).

As such, I am not convinced that the Shivans aren't merely xenocidal without all the mysterious motives. Not until I see a race whom they don't eradicate. Until that, Shivans = a mysterious, technologically superior, xenocidal race that has some shady agenda with subspace in my book - no more, no less.

[General Battuta]

At some point you need to look at the narrative role of the monologues in both games, though. They could be red herrings, but on the other hand, they might not be.

Whatever Works For Your Mod, of course, but I find the most interesting challenge is to use all the clues :V: dropped instead of disregarding them.

[OllieG]

I was under the impression that the Shivans preserve races that aren't developed enough to use subspace - if the Ancients arrived at Earth when we were busy mastering agriculture and hunting buffalo, they might have wiped us out.  By destroying aggressive interplanetary races the Shivans preserve those that are still developing.  Because of the exponential rate at which technology develops, most species will be in a pre-space travel state most of the time.  There are a lot of hints in both FS1 and 2 that the Shivans take an interest in subspace activity.  The Shivans might consider entry into subspace the point at which a race is "mature" and therefore subject to their judgment - in other words they would decide whether a species was aggressive or cooperative based on the way it behaves once it can travel the stars.  They wouldn't necessarily need an interest in culture to make that determination, they could just observe the way a given species treats other space faring races it encounters.  

[General Battuta]

I was under the impression that the Shivans preserve races that aren't developed enough to use subspace - if the Ancients arrived at Earth when we were busy mastering agriculture and hunting buffalo, they might have wiped us out.  By destroying aggressive interplanetary races the Shivans preserve those that are still developing.  Because of the exponential rate at which technology develops, most species will be in a pre-space travel state most of the time.  There are a lot of hints in both FS1 and 2 that the Shivans take an interest in subspace activity.  The Shivans might consider entry into subspace the point at which a race is "mature" and therefore subject to their judgment - in other words they would decide whether a species was aggressive or cooperative based on the way it behaves once it can travel the stars.  They wouldn't necessarily need an interest in culture to make that determination, they could just observe the way a given species treats other space faring races it encounters.  

What NGTM-1R objects to with this theory is that it makes no sense to save these planetbound races if you're just going to blow them up later; the Shivans should actively try to steer them towards cooperative behavior.

My response would be that the Shivans don't actually give a ****. They operate on huge scales and with vast numbers of candidates. Human beings don't start educating their young until they've finished fetal development, and the Shivans don't start exerting any selective pressure until a species has graduated from 'embryo' stage to 'bawling subspace-capable youngster.'

The Shivans might also be inclined to let species develop as they will up until the point where it matters. That allows greater diversity (since pre-subspace intervention by the Shivans might force species into particular evolutionary paths.)

Remember - this is addressed to NGTM-1R - the Shivan methods of interaction are 'kill' and 'ignore'. They don't seem to have any other settings. This could be by design, or it could just suggest an Eldritch Abomination-type intelligence, but either way it prevents them from being Happy Planetary Educators as thoroughly as our mindset prevents us from talking bacteria out of being infectious.

[Colonol Dekker]

Going back to the earlier comment on the Great War shivan fleet gradually locating the allied Homeworlds, how did the alliance know the shivans motives? Even if the shivans knew where they were going. How did we know they knew they did?
 
 
Etaks grandad?
 
 
 
Also, regarding Capella: the canon shows Shivans mining gas, i'd like to think that they wanted another nebula, but didn't want to waste their beachead in el system del Knossos.

[Kopachris]

Hmm.  The Ancients Monologues aren't exactly clear about whether the Shivans were originally prey, predator, or competition to the Ancients.  In Ancients 2, for instance, they say, "When the destroyers came for us, we attacked."  That seems to imply that the Shivies are predator, hunting the Ancients.  Then they go on to say, "We could forego one system.  We left it to the destroyers...", which makes it seem as though the Ancients and the Shivans were competing over a system.

I guess the real question is whether the cutscenes are considered canon fact or simply in-universe character musings.  When Alpha 1 says he "knows why the Ancient Ones were destroyed", should we take his word for it?  Did [V] want us to figure it out or lead us to a dead end?  Food for though.

[Colonol Dekker]

The Ancient recordings are the last surviving archives of the race.
 
They're retrospective in nature. The destroyers monicka was probably applied after momentum shifted from the Ancients favour. I always took that other ancient scene to mean that the ancients lost a populated system to the shivans and tried locking it off.

[NGTM-1R]

I'm not sure I get what you're saying. The Shivans preserve by destroying the 'sinners', as the Ancients put it. They don't actively go out and nurture new species. The destroyers are destroyed, and all the species that said destroyers would have wiped out instead get to grow up and take their turn at judgment.

Which is a false dichotomy. They're still going to end up destroying what they preserved earlier at some point. It's still wasted effort.

In this theory, everybody gets a free ride up until the point where their attitude towards other species starts to matter - i.e. when they run into other species. The Shivans are a filter.

Which isn't as effective as prevention. If this is really their purpose and they're capable of rational evaluation of it, they ought to have realized this.

The first the Shivans probably notice of a species is when it starts using subspace travel. That's when it becomes a threat to create a galactic/intergalactic monoculture.

But they can do better than that. They can prevent threats totally rather than letting them emerge. It'd be easier, and it help prevent monoculture much more effectively by having greater diversity.

The Shivans don't need to evaluate all the nascent potentials on multiple worlds. They're not a terrestrial species. Suggesting that they intervene with pre-subspace cultures is like claiming we should extend our law enforcement to apes.

If the apes were eventually going to be our neighbors, that would make quite a bit of sense, wouldn't it? Uplift is a classic science-fiction concept. Even if you hold onto the concept of "pre-subspace noninterference", the Shivans could still be more proactive once a race discovers subspace. This "wait and see" approach ultimately limits diversity as I will note below.

In short, the most efficient way for the Shivans to promote diversity is to wait for new starfarers to present themselves, give them a while to see how they act, and then either ignore them or throw a test their way.

Aside from it being easier to influence rather than destroy utterly making a mockery of your argument, there is another issue. In destroying, they also limit diversity. If they preserved these species they would later destroy instead by giving them a nudge in the correct direction, or simply being there immediately to greet them at the end of their first jump and explain the facts of the universe ("Be nice and we won't wipe you out."), diversity would be enhanced. There would be more species, more cultures. All evidence we have is that the Shivans are capable of rational thought, so they must know this.

You're right to assume the Shivans simply don't care. But that's because they're not caring about diversity at all. There are better approaches for preserving diversity no matter how you cast their interest or when it occurs or their conceptions of numbers (which I would warn you, you're making assumptions about).

They're not out there to preserve, not by design at least. Either they are incapable of rational evaulation of this drive, or it is not their driving purpose. Pick one.

[General Battuta]

I disagree.

edit: whoops, where'd the rest go?

Namely, I disagree because you've created a nice program for humans to help out other species that are pretty near human.

It's not a program that will work in a universe where communication between most forms of life is probably impossible.

 It wouldn't work on our newly imagined friends the Neumanns, who are a species of nonsentient colony probes gone berserker who just process planetoids into Dyson spheres which in turn manufacture more Neumanns.

In fact I suspect that most life in the universe is viral in this sense and that this is in no small part what the Shivans were designed to counter.


I recommend Stanislaw Lem, 'Solaris' or 'The Invincible', for good treatments of the topic.

The Shivans appear quite happy to employ the universal form of communication. You seem to be taking my argument as 'oh, the Shivans are here as a big intergalactic Neighborhood Intervention Program.' I don't think they are. I think they're a component of a very basic form of punish/reward conditioning meant to work on any form of life - a carrot/stick program without any carrot except survival.

We breed dogs by positive action - help the ones we like mate. The Shivans breed species by negative action: don't kill the ones that meet the criteria.

It might not seem locally optimal to you, but in terms of global effort across a limitless number of candidate species in multiple galaxies, it's the simplest, most reliable, and most efficient solution. Interference is hard, destruction is easy.

If it weren't for the need for their to actually be a game I'd expect the Shivans to just RKV everything after some observation.

In any case I'm happy to accept multiple explanations for the Shivans - Whatever Works For Your Mod! - but I think this one is nicely supported by canonical hints.

[Gamma_Draconis]

After watching the endings again, I really like what Petrarch had to say. Maybe the Shivans are really just exiles lost in our space for thousands of years. Being isolated from home, the Shivans would undoubtedly be aggressive in order to stay alive. It's better to destroy any threats before they become serious. So they became known as the Great Destroyer and Great Preserver to all the species that developed. However, Bosch somehow found the key that would allow the Shivans to return home. The destruction of Capella might have created a massive jump needed to reach some distant universe. Perhaps FS3 would have little or no Shivans at all. I can imagine rediscovering earth could send the GTVA into some massive conflict.

Now after watching a good number of the cutscenes again, I just have to say Volition did a superb job at giving so many different point of views which only further enhances the mystery of the Shivans. The Ancients, Bosch, Petrarch, and even Alpha 1 had different interpretations of the Shivans.

[Kopachris]

Now after watching a good number of the cutscenes again, I just have to say Volition did a superb job at giving so many different point of views which only further enhances the mystery of the Shivans. The Ancients, Bosch, Petrarch, and even Alpha 1 had different interpretations of the Shivans.

They do seem conflicting, don't they?  But are they really?  Or am I over-analyzing as usual?

Personally, I think it may be a combination of theories.  Lost in our plane of existence, perhaps the Shivans took up the role of protectors of innocence.  This could provide the "bigger problem" if the GTVA discovers a developing species and starts meddling with its evolution without any Shivans to stop them.

[TrashMan]

In short, the most efficient way for the Shivans to promote diversity is to wait for new starfarers to present themselves, give them a while to see how they act, and then either ignore them or throw a test their way.

Wouldn't the universe be even MORE diverse if they don' completely wipe out whole races?

A universe with Ancients, Terrans and Vasudans is more diverse than one with just Terrans and Vasudans...

[TrashMan]

Another thought...Do we actually have any hint of a race the shivans DIDN'T destroy?

All we see from the shivans is kill, kill and more kill. OR should I say ex-ter-min-ate!

All of this simply makes the whole "they nurture cooperation" theory rather lacking in any support.

And it still doesn't answer the question of why they continued to attack in FS1, even after humans and Vasudans were bussom buddies.

[General Battuta]

In short, the most efficient way for the Shivans to promote diversity is to wait for new starfarers to present themselves, give them a while to see how they act, and then either ignore them or throw a test their way.

Wouldn't the universe be even MORE diverse if they don' completely wipe out whole races?

A universe with Ancients, Terrans and Vasudans is more diverse than one with just Terrans and Vasudans...

No. Because the Ancients would have taken out the Terrans and Vasudans just as they did many other species.

Another thought...Do we actually have any hint of a race the shivans DIDN'T destroy?

Yes we do: the Terrans and Vasudans. When they clearly could have.

In this theory, they continued to attack in FS1 because the way you prove your cooperative chops (once you've been xenocidal enough to draw the Shivans in the first place) is by knocking out the Lucifer. It's the only way out.

[Inglonias]

In this theory, they continued to attack in FS1 because the way you prove your cooperative chops (once you've been xenocidal enough to draw the Shivans in the first place) is by knocking out the Lucifer. It's the only way out.

And yet, without Alpha One, the GTVA would have lost the war. Isn't he/she/it a factor?

[Snail]

That's a possible problem with the theory.

[Inglonias]

That's a possible problem with the theory.

Okay, so we admit that Alpha One pretty much won the Great War by him/her/itself. Now lets see...

During the second incursion, did the GTVA have the ability to breach the shields (NOT go around them via subspace)? If not, why didn't the Shivans send two or three more Lucifers?

[General Battuta]

In this theory, they continued to attack in FS1 because the way you prove your cooperative chops (once you've been xenocidal enough to draw the Shivans in the first place) is by knocking out the Lucifer. It's the only way out.

And yet, without Alpha One, the GTVA would have lost the war. Isn't he/she/it a factor?

No.

That's a possible problem with the theory.

Not at all.

Why would it be? Any pilot could have flown in that spot.

Alpha 1 did not win the Great War (or the Second Incursion) by his/her self. This is an illusion. Play on Insane, check out how many times you die.

[Kie99]

That's a possible problem with the theory.

Okay, so we admit that Alpha One pretty much won the Great War by him/her/itself. Now lets see...

During the second incursion, did the GTVA have the ability to breach the shields (NOT go around them via subspace)? If not, why didn't the Shivans send two or three more Lucifers?

Because they could be easily destroyed in Subspace.