[Riven]

there are other places than a mission to look for info. Open the ship table entry, go right to the bottom and look at the flags for the shivan comm node. one of the flags is "knossos" so therefore they must be connected in someway because the only other entry with a "knossos" flag is the knossos portal. Don't forget volition probably didn't know whether they would be making a third freespace while making the second so because of the occurance and mystery involved in the comm node and the fact that in fred it is named as a comm node makes it likely it would be used again if a third freespace was made. Possibly as a means of explaining some of the unexpained things such as the Ross 128 incedent.

Just a question but where did the figure 10 years come from near the start of the debate? It seems to me that my figures and opinions are as much speculation as this is.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Riven
there are other places than a mission to look for info. Open the ship table entry, go right to the bottom and look at the flags for the shivan comm node. one of the flags is "knossos" so therefore they must be connected in someway because the only other entry with a "knossos" flag is the knossos portal.

You keep making invalid assumptions. AFAIK The knossos flag is there so that freespace knows what icon to show in a mission briefing. It doesn`t mean that the shivan comm node is in any way connected to the knossos just like the fact that the mjolnir isn`t a cruiser despite having that flag.

Originally posted by Riven
Just a question but where did the figure 10 years come from near the start of the debate? It seems to me that my figures and opinions are as much speculation as this is. [/B]

Yes they are but  Stunaep says that they are speculation rather than declaring them as fact.

[CP5670]

The flag is probably just there so as not to break the game parser, as I once tried editing a ship and forgot to have one of those "class designation" flags and the game kept crashing until I put something in there.

Just a question but where did the figure 10 years come from near the start of the debate? It seems to me that my figures and opinions are as much speculation as this is.

They talk of "decade" or "decades" in a few places during the main campaign when referring to this, although an exact number is not given. I am having it set between 10 and 15 years for my purposes, but that is just an assumption.

[beatspete]

Yes the knossos portal is big in distance, but not in volume, its probably got the same volume as your average Destroyer, so unless the manufacting process for the internal components takes a long time, i don't see how a Knossos would take more than a few years to build.
Terrans might take a bit longer though, since it's an alien technology.

Comm nodes wouldnt be hard to build, think about it, its just the shivan equivilant of a mobile phone mast.  So maybee it transmits in subspace (i asume), but with shivan subspace technology how hard would that be, the GTA were doing it before the great war.

pete

[quadinhonic_II]

Are Knossos constructed piece by piece? Could the Ancients have a installation where already built sections are stored in BIG cargo containers?

[karajorma]

8000 years agoi there probably were installations like that. Now it's pretty unlikely they'll be any installations but there might be something underground on one of the planets they owned

[Tar-Palantir]

Also remember its for something like the Knossos it's not just the building that is going to take the time. They have scans of the device, but its made from Ancients technology that in all probablitiy is different to our own, which would then have to replicated.

Also stablising a node with a Knossos is probably more complicated than building the portal and slapping it down. You may have to program it with specific intructions about how to say, 'open' subspace. The Terrans and Vasudans might not even be able to do this.

Also, this information could be physically built into the Knossos, therefore simiply replicating the Knossos found in Gamma Drak might leave you with nothing more that an expensive blue rotating thingy.

Then you also have test rigs to ensure that when you build the thing, its does blow up.

In other words it's quite possible that such a project will take several decades.

[an0n]

The only real evidence that the Knossos' were Ancient was that Dr Hargrove said they were after all of 5 days examination on the edge of hostile space.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by an0n
The only real evidence that the Knossos' were Ancient was that Dr Hargrove said they were after all of 5 days examination on the edge of hostile space.

Yep but by now they've probably found enough ancient artifacts to be able to tell. It is possible that the ancients based their technology on that of whoever built the knossos though

Still I think it's about 99% that it was the ancients who built it

[neo_hermes]

maybe the  shivan comm nodes are like telephone poles on earth they just connect a shivan "installation's" communication system to where ever there Homeworld's at and communicate, send command briefings and all that stuff.
MAYBE IT'S OUR COMMAND!

[an0n]

I've just replayed FS2 and it says that the Knossos in (or to, I can't remember) leads to the system where the Ancients first encountered the Shivans. It also suggests in the cutscenes that the Shivans kicked the Ancients assses in all encounters. If this is true, how the hell did they build the 3rd knossos in the system beyond the nebula?

Also, the GTVA said that they could build a knossos in 5-10 years.

[karajorma]

I suspect that the shivans aren`t native to that nebula and that the shivans were first encountered through knossos 3.

Most likely on a dig in deneb or somewhere there was a piece of ancient writing that said that the ancients first encountered the shivans after travelling through a knossos portal.
 When command found knossos 1 they assumed that it was this portal that the ancients were talking about when in fact it was knossos 3 (or 4 or 5 etc,  )

As for the GTVA saying that they could build a knossos in 5-10 years that's mearly an estimate. You can`t estimate how long it takes to do research. It could take that long or after 30 years the GTVA could still be having problems with one aspect of the knossos.

I still think one of the funniest things in most stratagy games is a timer counting down the time until something is researched.

[Hippo]

Originally posted by quadinhonic_II


Lucifer shield system; better than anything GTA PVN had(s).

If the GTA or PVN had the Lucifers shield technology, why would they need beams? Just sit still un-harmable, and pound it with missiles and stuff, or ram it...

[Kabal]

The Knossos wouldn't take that long to build. It may be big in diamater, but there are only 4 interlocking thingies that were only as big as an aeoulus...

[Stryke 9]

4? I count 8.

Anyway, to know anything about the nodes, you'd have to know how they work. i.e. you'd have to make something up. And once you've started making stuff up, there's no better next step than to continue to do so. And so on. You think Volition consulted the Great Book of Immutable Science Fiction Truth before they went ahead? No. They winged it, and it worked. We wing it, and it works. Some people wing it, and they suck at it, and it shows, but asking someone else about it really won't get you any more information than you have at hand already, generally speaking. It's fiction, and thus imaginary to a large degree. The imagination it comes from is largely irrelvant.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Kabal
The Knossos wouldn't take that long to build. It may be big in diamater, but there are only 4 interlocking thingies that were only as big as an aeoulus...

]

Following that logic it should only take 5 minutes for cavemen to build a microchip! It's smaller than a spear and they could knock one of those up quickly.

 The time taken to build a knossos is not due just to it's size but due to the fact that all the relavent technology must first be researched. Then you have to build or adapt existing shipyards to be capable of building the thing. I don`t know how portable the knossos is (As far as I`ve seen the GTVA do`t have a freighter capable of transporting something as large as a part of the knossos very far) so maybe you`d have to build a new shipyard to build the knossos at it's final location.
 Once that's done you have to actually build the knossos. We don`t know how long that would take. It might be exceedingly complex inside.

I'd say 5-10 years was a good estimate but you could say that the estimates were over-confident and have it take 50 if you want. (it took 20 to build the colossus and that probably wasn`t half as difficult)