[Nightmare]

They're depersonalized, collective, and 'racial', without much sign of individual subjectivity or perspective. They don't feel very human to me.

IIRC, in the Old Kingdom of Egypt the word "human" and "Egyptian" was identical because they had next to no contact to anyone outside, and when contacts increased later on they weren't particular pleasent yet they remained this way for millenia. Perhabs they don't feel the way you do, but they still belong to the same species.

Once you are expanding between stars it's hard to not fill up the galaxy, so any theory of the Ancients has to provide a good reason they're not in full control of the galaxy before subspace. One theory I favor is that they'd filled up the galaxy but not in a united fashion; there were lots of Ancient subspecies in competition. The one that got subspace first became the galactic hegemon.

Time for some analysis.

Ours was a proud people, and always the strongest. For thousands of years our empire expanded. For so long we could imagine ourselves alone in the universe. For so long never did we encounter advanced life. And we travelled faster and further, spreading in our galaxy and before long we could see the day when our reachable systems would have been exploited. And then there would be nowhere else to go.

They were spreading in the galaxy, but there's no need to conclude they had thousands of systems before they discovered subspace.

And we discovered subspace. It gave us our galaxy and it gave us the universe. And we saw other advanced life. And we subdued it or we crushed it. In months the extermination of billions of years of evolution on a similar but slower path. With subspace, our empire would surely know no boundaries.

It somehow reminds me how the old Mesopotamian kings considered themselves "kings of the universe".

[Colonol Dekker]

I take from that last quote that the ancients did not encounter any advanced (space faring) life until they got their subspace thang on.

[Aesaar]

It's not ludicrous at all. It simply requires a psychology and culture very different from humanity's. Thousands or millions of years of internal conflict between branching sects of Ancient descendants could produce the instinctive, competitive, universal xenophobia the Ancients exhibited. They were 'a proud race, and always the strongest'; once one subgroup of Ancients got subspace, they would have such a total advantage over the rest that they could probably rule by sheer threat. And their history of internal competition would make their instant, xenocidal expansion natural and normal for them.

It would take thousands of years just to receive news of the ships you sent out a million years ago.  On this sort of timescale, discussing the Ancients as though they were a single species just doesn't work.

I suppose you could say that all the 'aliens' the Ancients found were actually earlier Ancients that had sufficient time to evolve that they were basically aliens.  Maybe that's what Humans and Vasudans are?

[General Battuta]

They were spreading in the galaxy, but there's no need to conclude they had thousands of systems before they discovered subspace.

You rather have to. They were in the boom phase of an explosive expansion, or they wouldn't be worried about running out of space. Even if for some magical reason they can't leave, say, a globular cluster, that's still hundreds of thousands of stars, and they'd fill it up in a blink even without subspace.

It's not ludicrous at all. It simply requires a psychology and culture very different from humanity's. Thousands or millions of years of internal conflict between branching sects of Ancient descendants could produce the instinctive, competitive, universal xenophobia the Ancients exhibited. They were 'a proud race, and always the strongest'; once one subgroup of Ancients got subspace, they would have such a total advantage over the rest that they could probably rule by sheer threat. And their history of internal competition would make their instant, xenocidal expansion natural and normal for them.

It would take thousands of years just to receive news of the ships you sent out a million years ago.  On this sort of timescale, discussing the Ancients as though they were a single species just doesn't work.

I suppose you could say that all the 'aliens' the Ancients found were actually earlier Ancients that had sufficient time to evolve that they were basically aliens.  Maybe that's what Humans and Vasudans are?

You can either view them as a diaspora of 'post-human' subspecies, like in Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space or House of Suns, or you can postulate that part of their xenophobic superiority was their fanatical adherence to their 'true form', including the extermination of divergent populations, anyone who used technology or selective breeding to modify themselves, and any cultural offshoots.

[Nightmare]

If the Ancients would have the technology to colonize the entire galaxy at sublight speed they could just ram a fighter into Lucy at 0.999c which then would be simply instant toast, shields or not.

[General Battuta]

No, because the Lucifer is invulnerable to conventional attack. In fact the FS1 Shivans are very well adapted to fight an opponent used to engaging in war at relativistic speeds and ranges.

[Nightmare]

Where is that stated? I don't think there was anything moving around with a relative velocity of more than a couple hundred m/s.

[Mito [PL]]

So, if we assume that Ancients were colonising the galaxy with subluminal methods en masse, and only discovered subspace during the process, there might be some interesting thoughts to make. For example, Ancients may have tried to expand into a different galaxy/star cluster via subspace and alerted Shivans to their presence - and the steamroll had begun. And while the parts of Ancient empire that actively used subspace for travel have been eradicated, the ones who didn't invent subspace FTL methods "yet" had to be eradicated by Shivans with more crude methods. If there's a populated system that no nodes lead to, or they're too unstable for even Shivans to travel, or there is a some kind of Ancient colony ship traveling through the void between systems, I guess Shivans might have taken the approach of totally spreading throughout the galaxy and methodically eradicating whatever remains they can find. Maybe the Lucifer armada was going around doing just that, yes, it might have taken them 8000 years after the subspace part of the empire fell, and they got... attracted by the sudden increase in subspace activity with the T-V conflict erupting.

Also, I don't see how Lucy could survive such a strike, and several dozen tonnes of metal accelerated to near-c speeds is by no means a conventional attack... Looking up some relativistic energy calculator, it seems like a ton of stuff accelerated to 0.9c gives you over 100 exajoules... I'd call that a planet-cracker. Even if Lucy's shields managed to absorb the hit, I really doubt the resulting acceleration wouldn't instantly make her break apart. Of course, we would need to know how the shields exactly work to make the jugdement.
My guess is, based on how the ML-16 works against shields of Shivan fighters in FS1 and how Maxim does that in FS2, that while shields are potent in deflecting/absorbing mass accelerator shots, they also have their limits. The fact that a Shivan bomber can regenerate its shields faster than you can spam ML-16 bolts at it doesn't mean that ten thousand of these impacting at once would not instantly evaporate it, or that a sufficient amount of Fury warheads doesn't do the same. Actually, isn't Avenger a weapon based on bullets?
And if we compare the biggest capship guns or warheads attacking Lucy to these pitiful ML-16 bolts bouncing off of a bomber, wouldn't a big enough impact also kill it?
And uhhhh, beams are basically a kinetic weapon too. Yet they penetrate shields, maybe because fighter's systems don't have the time to react to them? In this case, fastas**** object don't really differ much.

[Colt]

My brain hurts.

In a good way. 

[General Battuta]

How do you hit anything Shivan with an RKV? Especially if it takes a long time to accelerate?

[Nightmare]

Don't know, but if you colonize the Milkyway at sublight speed you have atleast 100.000 years to develope a working target system. RKVs probably don't cause any subspace disturbance and the projectile arrives the fraction of a second after its own light, so the Shivans most likely don't know that something's coming.

[Mito [PL]]

Well, if we go with this, we can just say that every FS ship is invulnerable to RKVs... Or anything that can accelerate is, basically.
I'd say it requires planning. You could just have an accelerator wrapped around your star, unleashing a rain of bullets at a jump node. If Vasudans had such a device and it survived into the incursion, they could totally block anything from entering Vasuda at all. Or at least the capships. Or swarm bullets into Lucy's orbital slot while it bombards Vasuda Prime. Eventually even envelope the whole planet and its surroundings with this kind of rain.
With such a device in Sol, GTA would only need to spam these projectiles at the jump node, waiting for Lucy to jump in to be instantly obliterated. Given that we don't really have to accelerate these to 0.9c to deal a lot of damage and that, at least in FS1, the jump node is near Earth, which is like 9 light minutes away from the Sun, it would be rather easy to use.
Plus, RKVs can (should) have some side thrusters to allow them to adjust their location in relation to the enemy, so they could hit even objects moving out of the way.

[Nightmare]

I once thought of something similar for a Sol fleet. All ships used LR-beams which could be fired at relay stations, from where they were (literally) channeled through subspace (via warp hole). The result was that Solforces with a medium sized fleet could attack every point in the system with the strength of INFs Icanus main cannon while remaining in a safe position.

Here's some cool read regarding RKVs/RKKS: https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4771ba89da222

[General Battuta]

Don't know, but if you colonize the Milkyway at sublight speed you have atleast 100.000 years to develope a working target system. RKVs probably don't cause any subspace disturbance and the projectile arrives the fraction of a second after its own light, so the Shivans most likely don't know that something's coming.

Why would they need to know something’s coming? With slower than light technology how do you possibly get your projectile on target before the Shivan jumps to, say, 1km away from your unarmored starship and blows it up?

And don’t forget that Shivan ships are stealthy.

100k years of relativistic tech don’t make you less vulnerable to a radically different tech base, they make you more vulnerable. Everything about the FS1 Shivans seems adept at utterly annihilating a relativistic civilization.

[Nightmare]

Why would they need to know something’s coming? With slower than light technology how do you possibly get your projectile on target before the Shivan jumps to, say, 1km away from your unarmored starship and blows it up?

That's called game balance. But the Ancients would have tons of ships to launch such things, while there's no canon evidence IIRC that there have been multiple Lucifers attacking them. And without the Lucifer, the Shivans are atleast less dangerous. Keep in mind that by the time they made contact with the Shivans they could have subspace ready ships capable of firing RKVs.

And don’t forget that Shivan ships are stealthy.

Yes. Just that Terrans and Vasudans dealt with that rather quick. For the Ancients you can of course say what you want.

100k years of relativistic tech don’t make you less vulnerable to a radically different tech base, they make you more vulnerable. Everything about the FS1 Shivans seems adept at utterly annihilating a relativistic civilization.

Except that they're depending on their largest target for executing effective operations.
While FS tech obviously doesn't include exponentiell growth (I mean they still need human pilots in the 24th century) 100k years is a HUGE amount of time...

[General Battuta]

The Lucifer has an invulnerable sheath shielding system and can jump faster than you can possibly accelerate your projectiles. I encourage playing some Kerbal Space Program to see how insanely hard it would be to hit anything that’s changing orbits so rapidly and arbitrarily.

Has it occurred to you that the stealth the Terrans and Vasudans defeated so quickly might have been adapted against the Ancients?

[Nightmare]

I don't know if Lucifer was constantly changing position to avoid being hit. It would make sense though, elseway the Vasudans might have tried to hit it with a kamikaze destroyer.

I think it would be next to impossible to hit something the size of the Lucifer, but if the Ancients were a galactic civilisation and had the resources to do so there would be an insane amount of chances though and unless the shield is made of solid magic, 1 hit should be enough. Of course you could argue that they scrapped their relativistic technology just before the Shivans showed up...

I think it's an interesting question whether the Shivans adapt to certain opponents and to which degree. The thing is, most of my ideas about the Ancients are based upon whatever I could find out about OTT, and that part about the Shivans was sadly missing.

Do you think the Ancients were unable to operate/adapt like Terrans and Vasudans?

[Jeep-Eep]

RKKVs are utmost trash garbo against anything that can actually respond to the things, and they're casual to beat - just a bit of sand and suchlike will be enough to ruin one, let alone the ability to  when it sees the light from one. They're only good at kicking around soft targets - 'preemptive defensive strike against non-military installations' are just about the only mission profile they're fit for.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=158707
A good thread that deconstructs the thinking around such and why they're such a damnfool idea - I'm surprised anyone in this forum is giving them the time of day... especially when Carl and company are around to demonstrate how to build an effective preemptive galacticide system right.

Which comes to another headcanon - if the Great Preservers theory is accurate, Shivans lock onto the light signatures of accelerating RKKVs and similar doomsday weapons, as well as subspace usage as signs of valid targets.

[AdDur]

Even with thousands of years to expand, travels with sublight speed are too slow to allow colonisation of entire galaxy. Milky Way has diamater of over 100.000 light years. Monologue doesn't says about other galaxies if i understand it correctly - it is rather a poetic use of "universe" term. Personally i always imagined Ancient empire as controlling at least hundreds, maybe thousands of star systems.

The long time of ancient sublight era always made me wonder - does some of the civilisations they destroyed would not be... another ancient colonists, from ships send reeeealy far away, and changed by millenias of isolation.

[Mito [PL]]

Well, anything capable of  is really well suited against RKVs, then. So, GTVA too, but not as well as Shivans, since Terrans/Vasudans still rely on planets and semi-stationary installations. In this case, ORS fleets from Exile are even better (every piece of industry being mobile in space and with subspace drives).
Shields are one more thing - but the question is, does Lucy use a shield system similar to what is on Shivan fighters, but in a much greater scale? If it does, it would really be only a matter of more dakka. The reason why in direct engagements with the Lucifer all FS1 capital ships have no chance of surviving is because Lucy's weapon damage to size ratio more resembles a fighter's one than that of a FS1 capship - so the shield strength to size ratio is probably around that too.