Registered: Feb 2001
Location: SUBANG JAYA, SELANGOR, MALAYSIA
Posts: 29

All right, something interesting here.

IceFire wrote:
I think its safe to say that the Shivans don't build Sathanas class vessels in two week or even six months (a more likely timescale than two weeks for FS2's story).
They most likely had those ships available beforehand and that the first ship to push to Capella was a "scout" and the rest were the main fleet.

I agree with you, unless that the Shivans had incredibly large and sophisticated shipyards - which is possible, and humongous amounts of resources available to them, building Sathanas at a rate of one a week is just not possible.

Its also interesting to note that while the Shivans did have alot of forces in Capella, I don't think they had 100 destroyers or even 20 destroyers. Those 80 Juggernaughts were gathered for a reason and the rest of the Shivan fleet was elsewhere.

I was wondering when someone would bring this up. It is a severe over-sight to have ignored this one. Shivans forces are known to be incredibly vast, why only the Shivan Sathanas were present at the last scene is really baffling.


- they have no identiable motive or method

This is not a issue. If you couldnt understand the language of another person, couldnt figure out their strange customs and culture nor qppreciate their understanding of arts or sciences, wouldnt that figure in "no identifiable motive nor method" for living?

Chinese culture was a real eye opener to Marco Polo, but those Chinese werent as un-communicative as the Shivans. If the Shivans even gave a few dialogues we'd begin to understand and then be able to guess at their motives.

- outside of Bosch and ETAK, they have not communicated with Terrans or Vasudans

This isnt a good point. A very shy, introverted person would stay away from communicating with others. Either that, or we're deaf to their method of communication. One of the best ways to pick up girls at the bar is to sweet talk your way. That's just what Bosch did.

- they have displayed very strange behavior on numerous occasions (the Tombaugh attack where the Shivans undoubtedly tracked the Taranis through subspace to the station or after the Lucifer was destroyed and all the remaining Shivans lost their fighting cohesion)

They didnt have intel of our positions and our strengths. It is a most suitable tactic for a race with lots of resources and a healthy dose of caution.

Either that, or they couldnt afford us to learn more about them - knowledge is power after all, and to be unknown is to be invincible.

- they are not terrestrial at all and have no interest in planets (except homeworlds - they do understand the concept of planet, they don't seem to have a need for them)

sigh, this path of thinking supports the hive mind idea in some ways. When dealing with a hive mind race, you kill the brain, the whole race falls apart. If the Shivans are a hivemind race, then they would do just that.

Besides that, there is a propensity to keep the most important branches of R&D, intelligence, command and control etc etc. on our home planet. Because of the way we branch out into space, our homeworld is most often the most secure part of our empire. Hence killing homeworld would cripple our forces, defeat moral. If a person feels like he's losing, he'd proly lose. There is nothing like when you lose your homeworld

- they have an affinitiy and a sensitivity for subspace that the Terrans and Vasudans lack (even with technology)

True, this shows that they are alien in that they have strange tactile senses. But nothing more. Snakes have heat vision - a form of radiation sensor, we know that some insects have IR sensors. But this justifies their alieness of form not of their thought and thinking process. There can be some similarity in a race's thinking.

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: SUBANG JAYA, SELANGOR, MALAYSIA
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somehow my alien-ness argument isnt air-tight, its leaking water... the ball is in your court IceFire.

I have a question. The Lucifer seems to have FAR more powerful shielding than the Sathanas. Whatever the GTVA had thrown against it hardly scratched it. How come the Sathanas' shielding seems so much weaker? Or am I not getting it right?

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: The Cold Northland!
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As far as we know, the Sathanas has no shields at all.

The only capital ship with sheilds was the Lucifer destroyer encountered in 2335 (AKA The Great War).

It seems that the Lucifer was their sort of command and control ship for the entire conflict. The tech room states in FS2 that once the Lucifer was destroyed, the Shivans became disorganized...suggesting that it had some sort of command and control purpose.

So why the Lucifer had sheilds and no other Shivan capital ship has them is a mystery. Also, it is speculated that a beam weapon might be able to penetrate the sheilds unlike the pitiful weapons carried by Great War capital ships.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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Judging from the power output the Lucifer had in it's reactors, which is equivalent to an entire Orion being loaded with Meson warheads, I would assume that the sheer power levels behind the Lucifer's shielding is what made it so effective.

The GTVA more than likely cannot get shielding devices to maintain coehesion past the level on the largest bomber-craft, which is why we more than likely will not see beam wielding bombers due to the power consumption of the beam weapon, the size of the focusing elements, and the fact that alliance technologies would not be able to maintain an active shield around a vessel of that size.

From what we know about the ancients, our best assumption is that a Lucifer class destroyer, or a small taskforce of them is what destroyed the Ancients as well as most sentient races before and after them.

The Sathanas may be a support role vessel due to it's configuration and apparant lack of volume within it's fighterbays. (however the Lucifer, despite it's low beam weapon coverage, we do know was loaded rim to rim between the reactor and shield system and it's massive fighterbays)

From what we've seen of the Sathanas, it more than likely is built for minimal defense for accomplishing it's mission, which more than likely is what we saw with the destruction of the Capella star.

The vessel is more than likely built arround the device which enables the sub-space effects which caused the star's nova.

These are simply assumptions, however there is good reason to believe it from the capabilites of the vessels.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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Quite possibly right. The ships main guns are extremely powerful as a by product of the power output of the ships reactors for other purposes.

Which would mean that the Sathanas is more of a science vessel than a juggernaught. There is a scarry idea

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Registered: Feb 2001
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[/i]It seems that the Lucifer was their sort of command and control ship for the entire conflict. The tech room states in FS2 that once the Lucifer was destroyed, the Shivans became disorganized...suggesting that it had some sort of command and control purpose.[/i]

I previously wrote:
wouldnt you be damned demoralized when the pride of your fleet gets wasted? The invincible death star just got moved down. Look at star wars. Also, the generals of the entire campaign would be on the flagship of the invasion force... and what is that flagship? Yes, of course, its the Lucifer. I dont think that line grunts will be able to function very well if you cut the whole upper key chain of command AND their most important aspects - communication and intelligence. Both of which would also be based on board, or have major lines in, the Lucifer.

Ace wrote:
The GTVA more than likely cannot get shielding devices to maintain coehesion past the level on the largest bomber-craft,

Or it could be that if you could generate a shield large enough to protect a cap ship, the shiled would be so damned powerful... then again there was the Lucifer.

As for the Sathanas not being a support or science vessel... I was thinking about too. But if it were a science vessel I dont think there would be that many guns. Perhaps the Sathanas is one big reactor to power the Nova weapon. They found that they still had some space left over in the forward pincers and loaded em up with big beamers.

All things considered, that the Shivans had shielded cap ships shows something here right?

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Registered: Jul 2000
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So essentially, the Shivans are similar to the Borg, except that they're not out to assimilate the galaxy. Actually, no-one can be sure of exactly what they're doing.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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That sort of sums it up...but they are really quite different than the Borg.

The Borg are very mechanical about their objectives...the Shivans are more elemental.

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: SUBANG JAYA, SELANGOR, MALAYSIA
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no no no. Without direction, no army can function effectively or at all. If you killed all your opponents generals and commanders, you'd render the opponents army incapable of fighting effectively.

That is the point, there need not be a hive mind at all, just the commanders.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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Overall, with the loss of the Lucifer, the Shivans "point of focus" if you will was turned from the attempt to silence sub-space activity in Terran-Vasudan space.

As stated earlier, all moves within FS1, and FS2 up until the final incident in Capella is all based upon sub-space activity and the Shivans destroying it.

The Shivans are extremely elemental, and if they are a hive mind, than the destruction of the Lucifer simply meant that the "point of focus" for the Shivans was moved elsewhere for the time being.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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I'm saying the Shivan version of a science vessel. They don't have to make a wimpy unarmed ship, they are Shivans!

I don't think the Intel Room reference points to demoralization. I meant that their actions became extremely disorganized not even fighting battles effectively.

It suggests less of a loss of a ship and more of a loss of some sort of 'hive mind' that without makes them disorganized.

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Registered: Aug 2000
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ABuGa is right. Also, you don't need to have a hive mind to be extremely organized - Terrans have a lesser ability to do so, but Shivans may not. They may even have 'optimized' themselves to make it more so.

There was another thing that caught my attention... if the Capella detonation WAS for a jump node (and it sure looks like it) either it would have been stable once Capella blew or those Sathanas ships were the ONLY vessels going through. Why? Maybe they were establishing a colony somewhere, possibly far away, so they could ensure some more formidable foe couldn't reach that part (the star will be gone? All the better). Maybe the 70 or so juggernauts was all they needed (which would explain why the Sathanas is so powerful anyway).

On the other hand, if it was stable after Capella blew - it wouldn't be beforehand, since they wouldn't leave six ships there for nothing - anything could happen, really. It'd be perfectly possible then that the Sathanas were only the scout ships.

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Registered: Aug 2000
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Actually, the Shivans may be entirely uber at biotechnology. Not that the Terrans could use this - the Shivans would probably get irritated (if that's possible) at the Terrans' sentimentality for not being modified beyond all recognition.

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First of all, Shivans are non-terestrial, so they don't "establish colonies" in the traditional sense.

Now Capella's being used to create new nodes wouldn't just make a one-time jump effect, it would form new natural sub-space nodes just like the ordinary ones at the exact moment that the mass changes would reconfigure every node in the system. (Alpha 1 got out at the last moment of stability, sorry Alpha 2)

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Registered: Jul 2000
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Actually Ace...its debatable how long that subspace node was formed. Nodes don't have to be stable and the Capella star did go supernova meaning that it just blew itself apart...I can't remember if a white dwarf forms or the star is just totally gone.

The node would need some kind of gravity field from a star to work.

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If Capella went supernova, there would be a remnant which would be a neutron star.

That star would have the mass required for new nodes that would last several million to several billion years, and the Shivans with their technologies that can use even barely existant natural nodes would mean that they would have access to the new points almost indefinately.

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Registered: Oct 2000
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quote:

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Originally posted by Ace:
If Capella went supernova, there would be a remnant which would be a neutron star.

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Yes, I know that it could also become a black hole, but I simply stated neutron star for ease of typing.

Overall, I believe that a neutron star would be probably used due to it's being easier to "control" and the lesser gravatational effect would not affect the rest of the sub-space node network as greatly.

Also, Shivans don't nesscessarily come from a nebula environment, the ionized fields for instance may react well with the methods used in their technologies.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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The Shivan BBQ Theory is simply that the Shivans want us only to put on their massive galactic sized BBQ for the next family picnic. Its a joke

A subspace node in the middle of the sun would be a problem tho Ace

Thats where I think the Shivans made their node....

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Registered: Feb 2001
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You guys have no idea how interesting its becoming now.

Ace got something there with the star creating a stable node when it went nova. We know that subspace nodes have a certain diameter/radius as shown by them big jump node indicators. It could be that while the star was collapsing, the gravitational forces surrounding the nova created a large subspace node to where-ever.

As for the fish bowl theory, over on my side we believed that the Shivans liked "living" in nebulae. We know that nebulae are clouds of particles, dust, base elements and radiation. It could be that Shivans feel more at home or cozy while being bathed by cosmic radiation present in nebulae. They could live well enough in normal space, but preferred the nebulae becoz of this radiation.

The support of this idea is their connection with subspace. We know that they are very sensitive to subspace. The theory goes that subspace is filled with certain kinds of radiation and since the Shivans dont seem to be able to stay in subspace for long periods of time, they hang out in nebulae.

The second idea is that the Shivans are on the brink of evolving into a higher form - one which can live in subspace permanently - like them wormhole aliens in Star Trek - DS9.

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