11 replies to this topic

[Preda]

Good day, Strategycore community. First post here, and I thought I should make it a good one. So, the question I'm asking you is: Where is the Reticulan Queen? Didn't anyone think it is strange that there is none? I don't know if this question has been asked before, so let's clear this problem.

My opinion is that there is no queen on the moon, only the so-called 'Teats' that generate the biomass material.
I expect your posts with anxiety.

[Accounting Troll]

Welcome to the forum, Preda.

I've always assumed that the three objects you have to destroy in the final room in the lunar base were the Reticulan queens.  The glossary entries draw an analogy between the Reticulans and social insects such as ants and bees, so I would expect a Reticulan queen to be much larger than a male and practically immobile.

[Preda]

Accounting Troll, on 21st September 2005, 9:06pm, said:

Welcome to the forum, Preda.

I've always assumed that the three objects you have to destroy in the final room in the lunar base were the Reticulan queens.  The glossary entries draw an analogy between the Reticulans and social insects such as ants and bees, so I would expect a Reticulan queen to be much larger than a male and practically immobile.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I beleive not. I have noticed that this is a frequent misunderstanding. In my knoledge, there is a great difference between 'hive mind' (ants, bees), and 'swarm mind' (locusts). In the glossary, they say 'cultural swarm mind', wich implies the Reti-s being educated to work like a swarm. A swarm is a large group of individiuals with NO LEADER. The swarm is self-organized, and works, no matter how dumb an individual is. That's why I think that there is no centralized form of 'monarchy' for the Reti-s, as was for the aliens in X-com. This is very practical, because a hive-minded civilization can be destroyed by eliminating the 'queen' (Brain, Ultimate Alien, Overmind or NIHILANTH). A swarm is almost impossible to destroy, because the intelligence is distributed between individuals, and there is no 'final target'.

In my opinion, the reasons why you are victorious after the moon base mission are:

-you blew up half the reti-s fleet
-you stole thir spaceship (although there may be more)
-you now control the only place far enough from the Earth to stay away from the Biomass, but close enough to observe it; their only 'watchtower'.
-you eliminated the source of the Biomass and the already-developed nodes

I think that the three 'objects' in the last room of the moon base are biomass teats, because, if you lok closely after you shot them, you'll see that they're mechanical (pipes, steam, etc). My suggestion is that you should stop calling that place the 'Royal room' until we find out what exactly it is (not that I want to criticise you in any way).

[Accounting Troll]

Hopefully we will learn the answer to this mystery in UFO Aftershock.  As my argument that the objects in the final room are alien queens is only a theory and could turn out to be wrong, I've put a link to this thread in the Aftermath fanfic writing FAQ.

Have you thought about expanding your theory and submitting it as an article for the newsletter?  If you do, send it via PM to either Pete or myself.  It's a bit late for this week's newsletter, but if you get it done by Tuesday or Wednesday, it could go in next week's newsletter.

If the objects in the final room are as you say, then it would make sense to put them on the lunar base because it would be more secure than Earth.  After all, if the Reticulans had suspected that humanity has managed to refit one of their ships in preperation for an attack on the lunar base, then they might well have a few battleships on standby.  I don't think the Retribution was the only space ship the Reticulans had as it just isn't big enough to carry thousands of personnel and all the equipment they need for their operations.

One argument in favour of your theory is that while the ordinary Reticulan soldiers don't know much about their plans, their generals do.  Perhaps the generals are the ones that provide the leadership and not the (alleged) queens.

[Preda]

Accounting Troll, on 22nd September 2005, 9:36pm, said:

Have you thought about expanding your theory and submitting it as an article for the newsletter?  If you do, send it via PM to either Pete or myself.  It's a bit late for this week's newsletter, but if you get it done by Tuesday or Wednesday, it could go in next week's newsletter.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I just posted twice and I am already asked to contribute in the newsletter. LOL


sure, I'll see if I can do this.

[Accounting Troll]

It's one less article for me to have to do if you can manage it

[GigiDuru]

I had read this thread before doing my (first) moon mission a few hours ago.

So I had in mind the different interpretations of the items to find (and hopefully destroy) in the alien base, seeking not only for mission success but also for understanding. Which I did only in part...

First, about the queen (or queens ?) I was surprised to find three of them in the last room (so surprised that I only saw one in the beginning). I cannot say for sure these are not queens, but...

As far as I know,  the "hive mind" is associated (for earthly species that is) with ONE adult queen. There may be several young "future queens" in a hive but they generally split and each one attempts to build her own colony.

So, even if the three "objects" have to be queens, none of them can be the "Reticulan leader".


Then, about the biomass teats. They are briefly referred to in the "happy end" message, as being Reticulans that suffered some transformation. But during the "destroy node" missions, one can actually see the nodes and they don't look at all like transformed Reticulans. The nodes look rather mechanical than biological, they have radio-like antennas and ressemble small UFOs.


Third, the biomass as a whole. We know it was supposed to became a big all-mighty brain. But all-mighty means it should eventually take control over Reticulans too instead of the opposite, that is the Reticulan "plan" is predestined to failure. Human history has many examples of beople being controlled by the person they expected to control.  


And a question I saved for the end, because I was flabbergasted (the longest english word to indicate surprise) when I saw this in the moon base. The life pods or something like this you are supposed to destroy are ONLY HALF OF THE WHOLE LOT. Besides, the "objects" to destroy look different (different colour, I mean) than the ones to leave intact. So there seem to be two types of them: good and bad? In theory everyone was supposed to be bad in the Reticulan expedition...


I'm not that sure that (all) these mysteries will be solved in UFO:AS, can anyone confirm or infirm ? By the other hand, there is also the possibility that we poor terrestrial fools just cannot understand the subtilities of Reticulan nature, science, technology and politics...

[Accounting Troll]

If the objects in the final room are the queens, then could the other objects you have to destroy be incubators for Reticulan babies?  If they are, maybe the colour denotes gender, and the main purpose of the mission is to kill off all the female Reticulans, so the males give up because they realise that they cannot establish a permanant colony in our solar system?

There are a couple of hints in the game that the Reticulans might not be able to control their creation if their experiment is successful.  The first is in a glossary entry about the purpose of the Biomass in which it says that even the Reticulans don't know how powerful their creation is going to be.  The second is the uncertainties of the end game message you get if you accept the Reticulan Offer.

[Blehm 98]

Perhaps, it is quite possible that once the reticulans see that you not only:
1) Survived the Twighlight falling
2) Survived the afteraffects of it
3) could live through the UFOs
4) could not only defeat them in ground combat, but shoot down their UFOs, and use their own technology to improve our own fighters and soldiers combat abilities and arsenal
5) Not only did the above, but attempted and succeeded in several raids on extremely important Reticulan complexes (area 51 and the russian mission)
6) Learned what the biomass is for, and then managed to not only control, but stop, and eliminate the biomass
7) Flew to the moon and then successfully raided and destroyed their primary base

they decided that humans were not worth the effort, they obviously were not expecting anyone to survive, let along fight back, and definately weren't planning on the fighting survivors to stop the biomass and actually hurt them.  So they gave up

[Preda]

I have already devised an idea on what those incubators are, and I'm SURE they aren't reticulans. You will hopefully see it all in the 4-th newsletter.

[Stefan100]

I think those "incubators" looks like the "cockpits" you can see in the UFO missions. Don't you?

[Lawrence Hung]

Stefan100, on 25th September 2005, 6:57pm, said:

I think those "incubators" looks like the "cockpits" you can see in the UFO missions. Don't you?

I reached the final moon mission and found the queen incubator, after defeating all the octopus.  But I couldn't end the game by destroying it either.  Why?  The white pointer keeps pointing to the incubator.  Help is very much appreciated.