[swashmebuckle]

Lucifer is Highlander (There can be only one)
Lucifer is Dragonheart (I am the last one)
Lucifer is the man now dog

[cahdoge]

It also could be that the Lucifer-design is antiquated.

At the and of the ancient war the shivans knew that thei're not the only one who can track ships through subspace.
But the shivan shield design won't work in suspace and in this combiation the atvantages against the sathanas design gets smaller.
While the Sathanas is able to absorb ataccs of indigenous species just through sheer mass the Lucifer is depending on their shields and generators. so there is also a higher vunreability against a massive EMP-Attack.

[Akalabeth Angel]

And there is a other very important reason.

If in FS1 would have been multiple Luciferclass-destroyers the Terran-Vasuidan Alliance would never be able to beat the Shivan fleet.
They hardly managed to destroyed the singel one.

the question basically is why were there no more in FS2 given that virtually every other shivan ship gets an outing and that the force would appear to be many magnitudes larger

Re-introducing the Lucifer into FS2 would have diminished its value in the first game.
In the same way that introducing dozens of Jedi in the Star Wars prequels diminished what it means to be a jedi.

Not only that but the story of FS2 is very clearly meant to mimick FS1's story.
The player is meant to believe that the Sathanas is the next new boss ship, replacing the lucifer in both function and form. It's a bait and switch. Later on when the second Sathanas is introduced, and dozens more thereafter, the nature, tone and pace of the story changes dramatically and takes the story and the player into new and exciting territory. In such a story the lucifer would add nothing and would in fact be a distraction.

[cahdoge]

I agree with you.

And I'm tending to open a discussion about the first three episodes of the starwars saga.

[0rph3u5]

The Lucifer is puzzlebox; if a civilization is able to figure out how to destroy the ship they earned their survival.... at least that was theory I had been working with.

I think this is a super cool theory. It's even a bit metatextual.

Thank you for the flowers ... but I abandoned that approach because it gives the Shivans a very antropomorphic intentionality (is that even a word in english?) or a tangible grand sceme of things; it takes away much of mystery and the terror

and right now I'm more focused on the idea why the GTA named their unknown enemies "Shivans" and what the re-construction-era society made of the Shivans ("The only reason the GTVA is still in power is that we think of the Shivans as monsters"); sadly I've a few problems with translating these ideas into FS-typical gameplay

[Grizzly]

And there is a other very important reason.

If in FS1 would have been multiple Luciferclass-destroyers the Terran-Vasuidan Alliance would never be able to beat the Shivan fleet.
They hardly managed to destroyed the singel one.

the question basically is why were there no more in FS2 given that virtually every other shivan ship gets an outing and that the force would appear to be many magnitudes larger

Re-introducing the Lucifer into FS2 would have diminished its value in the first game.
In the same way that introducing dozens of Jedi in the Star Wars prequels diminished what it means to be a jedi.

Not only that but the story of FS2 is very clearly meant to mimick FS1's story.
The player is meant to believe that the Sathanas is the next new boss ship, replacing the lucifer in both function and form. It's a bait and switch. Later on when the second Sathanas is introduced, and dozens more thereafter, the nature, tone and pace of the story changes dramatically and takes the story and the player into new and exciting territory. In such a story the lucifer would add nothing and would in fact be a distraction.

Hmm. Why wouldn't the Lucifer be able to fulfill the role the SD Ravana does in the FS2 story?

[Megawolf492]

Hmm. Why wouldn't the Lucifer be able to fulfill the role the SD Ravana does in the FS2 story?

It really all depends on the Lucifer's shields.
If they truly are invulnerable to everything (except in subspace), including beams, EMP's, meson bombs..., then the Lucifer is a much bigger danger than the Ravana. Yes, you could destroy it in subspace, but that would require it to leave the nebula system, as intrasystem jumps are nearly instantaneous. As long as it stays in the nebula, it's safe.
If the shields are only resilient (or not at all) to beams, then you have something slightly more dangerous than the Ravana, but then the player can't really participate in its destruction. You have to destroy it with beamed ships.
If there are no shields, then the Lucifer is not really a danger. Yes, it has 8x the hull strength of the Ravana, but offensively it doesn't really compare. Bombers can just kill the two beams and it's done (that would make Bearbaiting much easier).

[Rheyah]

I can think of a few answers, but the one I prefer is that the Lucifer isn't a warship.

[Lorric]

The Lucifer is puzzlebox; if a civilization is able to figure out how to destroy the ship they earned their survival.... at least that was theory I had been working with.

I think this is a super cool theory. It's even a bit metatextual.

Thank you for the flowers ... but I abandoned that approach because it gives the Shivans a very antropomorphic intentionality (is that even a word in english?) or a tangible grand sceme of things; it takes away much of mystery and the terror

Weird. He liked it when you said it, but he didn't like it when Rheyah said it (Shivans are testing us.)

[Lorric]

BTW, there's one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet I believe in this thread, and that's that the Lucifer seemed to be serving some kind of hive mind function as well. It's talked about afterwards how the Shivans seem to have lost their edge so to speak with the destruction of the Lucifer, both in terms of intelligence and putting up a fight. Of course, I'm sure that's just that needed an excuse for how we could go from the brink of annihilation to essentially a large scale mop-up operation to get the Shivans out of the way so the real enemy of the expansion can take the stage.

[General Battuta]

The Lucifer is puzzlebox; if a civilization is able to figure out how to destroy the ship they earned their survival.... at least that was theory I had been working with.

I think this is a super cool theory. It's even a bit metatextual.

Thank you for the flowers ... but I abandoned that approach because it gives the Shivans a very antropomorphic intentionality (is that even a word in english?) or a tangible grand sceme of things; it takes away much of mystery and the terror

It doesn't have to at all! I'm not a big fan of the idea that the Shivans are a massive cosmic test, but you can see how BP tackles this and kinda gets at the best of both worlds. BP has the wrinkle of placing a holocide anima aboard the Lucifer (left over from the Ancient cull), which explains the breakdown of Shivan organization after 'Good Luck' without going full Ender's Game.

[NGTM-1R]

It's talked about afterwards how the Shivans seem to have lost their edge so to speak with the destruction of the Lucifer, both in terms of intelligence and putting up a fight.

Nobody talks about it in this thread because the major contribution of Silent Threat to the canon was actually to deny this theory via Hellfire, and the fact that circa Hellfire there was a major fleet action ongoing and the scales were close enough that a small group of Shivan cruisers was considered so likely to tip the balance it was worth deploying GTI and their new bombers against them.

[General Battuta]

It's not canonically denied - it's considered a theory with some evidence in support.

Xenobiologists know very little about Shivan society. 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 Lucifer, the turning point of the Great War. Other experts caution against attributing insectoid properties to the Shivans, regardless of their appearance and behavior.

[Ace]

Honestly, I think that the Sathanas fleet is the first time that the Terrans and Vasudans even managed to show up as a blip on the Shivan's radar.

Lucifer fleets basically existing to sterilize planets near subspace activity. Sathanas fleets being more utility ships to re-organize node networks if they were disrupted (i.e. Sol node and Knossos).

The Lucifer basically being like a Leviathan while a Sathanas might be more like a Faustus.

I could see the Terrans and Vasudans starting to have capital ship shielding in a post Sol-reunification era, only to discover that the Lucifer was effectively one of the smallest Shivan "military" ships.

I've always seen the Shivans as basically just reacting to subspace disturbances and swatting anything in the way. Now *why* they feel a need to maintain and reconfigure subspace nodes and weighting taking out or working around FTL capable species is another question.

[Scotty]

I've never liked the "Lucifer is a small Shivan ship" theory.  It presupposes that things can't be dangerous if they're not huge (a.k.a. the Inferno school of thought).  Huge things are generally more capable of producing devastation focused into a tiny area relative to their size, but I think that in terms of the Shivans that sort of 'eggs in one basket' (whether they have more baskets is meaningless) mentality is really missing something that makes the Shivans the Shivans.  It's an anthropomorphization of something that shouldn't really be anthropomorphized.

I'd be much more intrigued by a Shivan response that identifies Terran and Vasudan doctrinal shifts.  Namely, that between FS1 and FS2 the capital ship has become orders of magnitude more dangerous to anything else on the field, but their greatest strength lies in holding territory.  The Shivans don't need to hold territory by any objectives they've displayed in either FS1 or FS2, so why do they bring along capital ships of their own?

Transport?  Terran and Vasudan fighters are capable of traversing nodes.  Pilot readiness/comfort?  I doubt it.  Rearmament?  That's probably the biggest argument, but I think it still falls short.  Shivan fighters and bombers are ultimately expendable.  A Shivan incursion that consisted of thousands upon thousands of fighters and bombers and little else would be a devastating end around to the Terran/Vasudan military paradigm.  You can't shock jump a fighter.  You can disarm a bomber, but a dozen more line up right behind it.  Anti-fighter weaponry would advance by precipitous need in leaps and bounds, or the GTVA would go under in a matter of months.

[0rph3u5]

The Lucifer is puzzlebox; if a civilization is able to figure out how to destroy the ship they earned their survival.... at least that was theory I had been working with.

I think this is a super cool theory. It's even a bit metatextual.

Thank you for the flowers ... but I abandoned that approach because it gives the Shivans a very antropomorphic intentionality (is that even a word in english?) or a tangible grand sceme of things; it takes away much of mystery and the terror

It doesn't have to at all! I'm not a big fan of the idea that the Shivans are a massive cosmic test, but you can see how BP tackles this and kinda gets at the best of both worlds.

I'd be happy to have this discussion some other time, when all cards regarding BP are on the table. I'm certainly no fan of the "BP cosmology" as it has been revealed so far but I don't have the full picture yet.

Weird. He liked it when you said it, but he didn't like it when Rheyah said it (Shivans are testing us.)

Because I said something very different. In 2011 I posted a crude draft of the idea here (link), maybe that will shed some light on it.

[bigchunk1]

I've never been a fan of the Shivans being selective in their destruction based on morality. What's more scary, a pious warrior or an active indiscriminate killer? One you have long negotiations with and the other you just shriek and run from.

I'm not sure if it's canon but I heard that the Lucifer was a scouting vessel sent with a scouting fleet. It is a specialist vessel designed to defeat lesser races who don't know how to penetrate shield defenses. I always thought a race "Passing the Lucifer test" was a bad thing for that race because it signaled the shivans to send a proper fleet.

Lucifer = submarine    Sathanas = battleship


Then again, what really probably stirred the bee's nest was project ETAC. Actively moving into shivan space with a "Here we are guys" beacon probably isn't good.

[Lorric]

Because I said something very different. In 2011 I posted a crude draft of the idea here (link), maybe that will shed some light on it.

I like that very much.

[0rph3u5]

What's more scary, a pious warrior or an active indiscriminate killer? One you have long negotiations with and the other you just shriek and run from.

Acutally that depend on your view of "what is the worst thing that can happen to you?"

A truly "indiscriminate killer" has no other interest in you or conflict with you; there is no agenda to furfilled or no need for justification for the act. The worst thing such a person will do to you (or a society) is kill you.
A "pious warrior" has an adgenda which compells him/her to attack not only you personally but everything you are connected to that is objectionable accoriding to his/her agenda. Such a person would not just kill you but also destroy everything you held dear in your live, due to being associated with you; such a person might actively try to erase your existence from the collective memory and with your that eliminate all traces of your ideas, struggles and experiences, which are of potential benefit to others.

If you fears begin and end with your personal physical well-being, the "indiscriminate killer" is certainly the bigger issue. But if you are concerned more that what your life and it's contents can and will mean to others the "pious warrior" is the worse threat.

[Megawolf492]

I've always seen the Shivans as basically just reacting to subspace disturbances and swatting anything in the way. Now *why* they feel a need to maintain and reconfigure subspace nodes and weighting taking out or working around FTL capable species is another question.

Has anyone thought that Capella going supernova was an accident? That they were trying to do something else, but they messed up and blew the star up? That would explain why some of the Juggernauts going dark right before the explosion. The others were trying to escape (which they could have done pretty easily given that a supernova doesn't disrupt subspace too much). That would mean the Shivans aren't perfect, but I'm OK with that.