The Behemoth

Wa Oh, so I guess the bugs managed to get something really big and nasty into Gemini (near it anyway) for the hulk to be around there. Although maybe they needed to blow up an infected planet though that does seem extreme for Confed. Hmm...be great to see what people might come up with (both officially and fan-made)
 
If I recall correctly, the Behemoth, like the T-bomb required the planet to be unstable from before to be able to 'blow it up.' The ones produced during the Nephilim war were most likely intended to be ship-killers, taking on bug dreadnoughts and fleet killers... possibly something larger than anything we've seen.

It doesn't really make sense to have an entire fleet of Behemoths blowing up planets all over the place, except perhaps if they were taken on the offensive, and that would still seems a bit... impractical, especially if I'm remembering their limitations right.
 
I'm pretty sure that there is no known (known being key) limitation to the behemoth's main guy. (at least none from WC3) IIRC, there was no mention of stability with regards to a target planet/moon nor indication of size limits of said target. I actually noted this lack of limits when I recently played WC3. I had thought the same as you did and was surprised to see no mention of it.

There could be limits for all we know, but there is nothing in the canon to indicate one way or the other.
 
The Temblor bomb needs an unstable world.

The Behemoth gun doesn't.

The only limit might be the actual size of the target, but even if it is too big to annihilate, there surely won't survive any living thing or built structure on it.
 
Iceblade said:
Wa Oh, so I guess the bugs managed to get something really big and nasty into Gemini (near it anyway) for the hulk to be around there. Although maybe they needed to blow up an infected planet though that does seem extreme for Confed. Hmm...be great to see what people might come up with (both officially and fan-made)
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Well that also begs the question as to what one of those would be doing in the backwater sector anyway... unless it was undergoing trial runs. Still seems a pretty "public" place to be doing that.
 
Yet the S*S reference refers to the A-17 Broadsword Behemoth Bomber!
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That's one of the bombers you fly in the game itself.

I can't find the thread now, but I think someone mentioned something about their hulks being a navigation issue. Can someone elaborate on this? Were they destroyed and that was to emphasize just how big they are?
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In-universe, it's just a Privateer-style mission. Extra-universe, though, it's not supposed to make any sense--it's a gentle dig at Babylon 5, whose space station was bulldozed in that series' finale for that same famously incomprehensible reason (being a "menace to navigation").

I'm pretty sure that there is no known (known being key) limitation to the behemoth's main guy. (at least none from WC3) IIRC, there was no mention of stability with regards to a target planet/moon nor indication of size limits of said target. I actually noted this lack of limits when I recently played WC3. I had thought the same as you did and was surprised to see no mention of it.
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No, Dyret is correct--it's from the Wing Commander III novel, which claims that the Behemoth was designed to destroy tectonically unstable words like Kilrah... and that it's not known whether it would be capable of destroying an ordinary planet or not (but that it would cause massive destruction, regardless).

Well that also begs the question as to what one of those would be doing in the backwater sector anyway... unless it was undergoing trial runs. Still seems a pretty "public" place to be doing that.
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Do we know that Gemini *was* a 'backwater' sector in the Nephilim War? It's implied that Perry Naval Base was destroyed--it may have been a major battlefield.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Do we know that Gemini *was* a 'backwater' sector in the Nephilim War? It's implied that Perry Naval Base was destroyed--it may have been a major battlefield.
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From my compiled post-Prophecy Timeline:

"2685 - Over forty systems scattered throughout the Sol, Vega, Trk’Pahn, and Gemini sectors are quarantined and blockaded by a coalition of official Confederation and conscripted local militia vessels. Supplies are delivered to the afflicted areas with unmanned drones. (POL2)"

"2686 - The Gemini Sector is the hardest hit by the virus due in part to the pirate and mercenary activity that has distributed contraband alien technology. All jump points out of the sector are blockaded. Drone transports are utilized to send supplies to systems. (POL2)"

"2688 - Mass inoculation against the Nephilim Virus begins in earnest.Emergency teams are sent to key junction systems within Gemini to evaluate the damage and assist survivors. The economic and social impact involved with the loss of Gemini’s cultural and industrial resources forces the CCSP to reevaluate its strategy for the pioneering effort."

So three big things:

1) A blockade operation was going on, so there were likely to be lots of ships in the area. There are ALOT of jump points leading into and out of Gemini, so it wouldn't be a small thing to shut down an entire sector.

2) The Nephilim obviously felt the system was significant enough to the war effort that they clamped the whole thing down with a Virus. Not likely something they would do to a backwater sector.

3) While we have the reference to a 'hulk' we also say that the 'weapon of mass destruction' must be disposed of. So here is an alternate theories: maybe the ship is still 100% intact and operational...but sometime during it's enforcement of the quarantine it got infected, and now it has to be destroyed because of the infection. Thereby neatly skipping the need for Gemini to be anything like a front line sector and maintaining it's backwater standing.
 
Jason_Ryock said:
1) A blockade operation was going on, so there were likely to be lots of ships in the area. There are ALOT of jump points leading into and out of Gemini, so it wouldn't be a small thing to shut down an entire sector.
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No, I wouldn't imagine blockading a sector to be an easy thing at all, but only about twelve jump lines are shown on the Universe Map (though clearly there would have been more at the very least to the "north") and thousands of warships (thousands of Battlecruisers alone) were produced to fight the Nephilim, so it's potentially very different from the lone ship flittering from jump point to jump point that immediately comes to mind.

Jason_Ryock said:
2) The Nephilim obviously felt the system was significant enough to the war effort that they clamped the whole thing down with a Virus. Not likely something they would do to a backwater sector.
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The Nephilim didn't "clamp" anything down with a virus. You need to reread your Secret Ops fiction. Nephilim salvage was found to infect humans with a horrible virus, and your quote right there explains that Gemini was hit so hard because of black market trading there of Nephilim contraband.
 
Also, those bits are from unpublished Privateer Online material. While cool, it isn't "canon" and it largely contradicts both Arena and the background material for most of the other cancelled games by downgrading the scale of the Nephilim conflict to near-nonexistence.
 
The Nephilim obviously felt the system was significant enough to the war effort that they clamped the whole thing down with a Virus. Not likely something they would do to a backwater sector.
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Well, we don't really know what the Nephilim are up to at all. The way you describe it is putting them very similarly to the Terrans and the Kilrathi in terms of their intentions, their thoughts, and so on. What we percieve as "war effort" on their part may actually be something strange we don't even can begin to understand, let alone have a word for it.

You guys propably know the material much better than I do, so maybe you can prove me wrong on that, but as far as I know we don't know at all what their intentions might be, so any assumptions on what would "make sense" in their behaviour are futile.
 
We have some ideas about the purposes beyond the Nephilim, but very little is actually included the canon materials.

In the Nephilim war, humanity is being tested for inclusion in some sort of intergalactic hierarchy and became one of the aligned races. I remember few details beyond that.
 
ChrisReid said:
No, I wouldn't imagine blockading a sector to be an easy thing at all, but only about twelve jump lines are shown on the Universe Map (though clearly there would have been more at the very least to the "north") and thousands of warships (thousands of Battlecruisers alone) were produced to fight the Nephilim, so it's potentially very different from the lone ship flittering from jump point to jump point that immediately comes to mind.
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Oops! I'm sorry, I never meant to imply otherwise. In my mind it really was the hundred-of-ships-theory, I just meant that the Behemoth in question may have been one of those ships.

ChrisReid said:
The Nephilim didn't "clamp" anything down with a virus. You need to reread your Secret Ops fiction. Nephilim salvage was found to infect humans with a horrible virus, and your quote right there explains that Gemini was hit so hard because of black market trading there of Nephilim contraband.
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I was somewhat under the impression from the context that the virus was deliberate, but you're right - the quote does indeed counter that theory.
 
Iceblade said:
We have some ideas about the purposes beyond the Nephilim, but very little is actually included the canon materials.

In the Nephilim war, humanity is being tested for inclusion in some sort of intergalactic hierarchy and became one of the aligned races. I remember few details beyond that.
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Aligned people... is THAT canon?
 
frostytheplebe said:
Aligned people... is THAT canon?
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One of the bug's taunts in prophecy has to do with the Aligned people... but I don't think it's ever officially clarified in game what it means. A lot of their background is speculation from the in-game hints and from some of the design documents.
 
AD said:
One of the bug's taunts in prophecy has to do with the Aligned people... but I don't think it's ever officially clarified in game what it means. A lot of their background is speculation from the in-game hints and from some of the design documents.
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That much I know, but is it canon that the human race becomes "Aligned people":(
 
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