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SectoidEmperor

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  1. Brotip: to get access to the T'Leth and Leviathan research, you need to research Alien Origins, Ultimate Threat, all the other Subs, and THEN capture a live Lobsterman Commander and interrogate him.
  2. I'd really like to get my hands on the Cthulhu tiles from the last level of TFTD. Anyone have it, or know where I can find it, preferably in a format that can be opened with Paint or TLP?
  3. Urliar Ottokraus waited. The lights above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were aliens in the base. He didn't see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to Commander Romanov were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway. Urliar was a aquanaut for fourteen years. When he was young he watched the tritons and he said to dad "I want to be on the subs daddy." Dad said "No! You will BE KILL BY ALIENS" There was a time when he believed him. Then as he got oldered he stopped. But now in the floating base of X-Com he knew there were aliens. "This is Romanov" the radio crackered. "You must fight the aliens!" So Urliar gotted his sonic blasta and blew up the wall. "HE GOING TO KILL US" said the aliens "I will shoot at him" said the tasoth and he fired the disrupter launcher. Urliar soniced at him and tried to blew him up. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to kill. "No! I must kill the aliens" he shouted The radio said "No, Urliar. You are the aliens" And then Urliar was a tentaculat.
  4. Goddamn you, Terror from the Deep. This is what you SHOULD have done. Goddamn you.
  5. That would imply that the aliens are united by a sort of ideology. Races that believe in "improving" themselves toward some abstract concept of genetic perfection choose to join the alliance and submit themselves to the commands of more "perfect" races in order to help themselves on the road to ascension. Races that don't want to cooperate (like humans) are vermin to be used or exterminated. I like it, good thinking. Yep. Didn't especially like it, though. I felt like it took a lot of the mystique out of the character of Samus Aran by making her too much like a normal human girl (I had been hoping for more of a female version of Ender Wiggin or Valentine Michael Smith, but no), and it portrayed the universe as being too Star Warsy and not Aliensish enough. The thing with Mother Brain was cool, though. Do you post on MDB, btw? I'm Sylux. Not very familiar with Apocalypse, so I can't comment there. However, it might just be prudent to think of TFTD as an unofficial Delta Green strategy game and mentally divorce it from X-com.
  6. Sort of like the first Half Life? Interesting. If this is so, then the Brain was certainly lying about their long history on Mars and Earth. They would have just come here recently. Still leaves the question of their relation to T'Leth, though. I've had similar thoughts. Like, maybe a handful of mutons or floaters manage to free themselves of their masters' control and defect to humanity, or perhaps sought asylum with us after the fall of Cydonia. However, as potentially interesting as that could be, it doesn't fit X-com's grimdark theme. One theory I had was that the sectoids and ethereals are the same species. The sectoids are described as having a "hive-like society." In that case, wouldn't it fit for there to be a disposable "worker" caste and a higher-ranking leadership one? Sectoids and ethereals resemble each other physically, are the only aliens in EU to use psionics, and are the only ones described in the ufopaedia as having self-interested goals rather than being slaves. So, perhaps they are different forms of the same species (which rules over the other, unrelated races in EU)? Animals, or sentient beings. Its possible that the mutons and floaters were intelligent and civilized in their own ways before being recruited (willingly or otherwise; we have no way of knowing) into the empire. Of course, its also possible (as you said) for them to be completely bio-engineered races without a specific natural ancestor. In particular, this would fit the mutons, who (according to the lore) have the least capacity for independent thought. If they were bio-mechanical androids, that would make sense. The snakemen are said to be animalistic and predatory when not being controlled. They were probably semi-sentient at best to begin with (maybe chimpanzee-level intelligence). A classic case of the good old uplift. I wonder if the ethereals were actually fully in charge. While they definitely had command over the other races in EU, did the mother brain outrank them? Was it their computer, or were they its underlings? In either case, is it possible that whoever was running the Earth invasion (either the brain or the ethereals) was actually answering to someone else outside of the solar system? For all we know, the ethereals could just be middle-management people, managing the lesser races in various operations while reporting to an even greater one. In this case, maybe the Great Sleeper's race are the ones on top of it all? Of course, if the Brain was really in charge, that would imply a post-singularity AI dictatorship. Some poor suckers created a brain-computer that overthrew its masters and then created other brain-computers to rule the universe. Haha, my Metroid fandom is showing... On one hand, the Great Sleeper had eyes and tentacles, which would be odd design choices for a biocomputer. On the other, maybe it wasn't always a computer. Maybe the Great Sleeper's species overwent a transhumanist (transalienist?) evolution over the last few aeons, abandoning their natural forms in favor of life as computerized minds. Its also possible that the Great Sleeper was a natural creature that the aliens collected and modified to turn it into a computer, using its natural thought capacity and psionic power for their own purposes. In this case, they could have eventually learned to duplicate this creature's powers artificially, allowing them to build brains instead of having to lug Cthulhus around with them. So many possibilities, so little information... I don't know where to start analyzing why the Cydonia base only activated T'Leth at the end of the war, and why in 65 billion years the T'Leth aliens couldn't get their shit together on their own (but then got everything fixed by one stupid laser beam from space. Really, if that was all it took, it seems like they should have been able to do it themselves, since its stated in the game that small groups of them have been awakening for eons and enslaving gillmen and such). I heard one theory that the Cydonia aliens were actually a rescue mission, sent to pacify the Earth natives and then retrieve T'Leth. In that case though, why the hell would it take them 65 million years? Ugh, the TFTD story has holes no matter which way you cut it. Honestly, it would have made more sense if they just called TFTD a different universe instead of making it a sequel.
  7. You sure about that? The final level has terror units from several races, but I think the only actual race you fight is the Ethereals. There are sectoids on the Martian surface, but that's a different map. Am I wrong about this? If not, it could very well be a game engine issue. In any event, the lore and background of X-com, particularly the aliens, needs a LOT of fleshing out. To avoid derailing this thread, here's another one: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/Regar...4235#entry94235
  8. Hi there. Tonight, I'm going to inflict my inability to take any game at face value on the rest of you and ask for your thoughts about the X-com aliens. Basically, WHO THE HELL ARE THESE GUYS? How did the different races come to be working together? Are they all slaves of one master species? If so, how much individual freedom and cultural diversity do they still have? Is their empire really tens of millions of years old, and, if so, what the hell have they been doing all that time? What was the deal with the ruins on Mars? Was the alien brain lying when it claimed to have created humanity? What was the role of that brain in their society anyway (was it an actual artificial intelligence, or just a war coordinator system? If the former, was it self-interested? Is the entire alien empire ruled by such AI's?)? Things get even more confusing in Terror From the Deep. Was the Cthulhu-ripoff a unique entity? If so, where did he come from? If not, are there others like him? What role does he or his kind play in the empire at large? Are they perhaps competitors with the other alien faction that simply happen to use some common slave-races (like sectoids)? Why did the Cydonians wait until they were defeated before awakening T'Leth? And, if T'Leth has been dormant since its arrival on Earth, how were its passengers able to enslave the gill-men? I doubt the game developers had answers to all these questions in mind when they made the games. They probably just went through a list of UFO conspiracy theories and Cthulhu Mythos elements and threw everything they liked into the pot. But hell, overthinking every last detail is what gaming forums are for.
  9. This is what I always thought. The aliens probably keep the chryssies in stasis when they aren't in use, occasionally letting them wake up to infect some captured humans or animals in a controlled environment to boost their numbers (less time consuming than growing new chryssies in a cloning lab). This would also explain why they don't just drop a few hundred chryssalids and let them destroy the world. With their artificially accelerated metabolisms, the chryssalids have a lifespan measured in hours. The one limitation of what would otherwise be a bioweapon of world-ending power. I like this idea; newborn chryssalids are actually infertile, but borrow some embryos from the parent during implantation. Really enforces the idea that this is an engineered species, changed vastly from its natural behavior and development cycle of its ancestral species. Its also an elegant solution for the "why don't chryssalids overrun the earth" problem I brought up earlier in this post. As for the conservation of mass issue; what if the chryssalid isn't a parasite, but a virus? After infection, the viral agent travels to the nuclei of each cell and attaches itself, turning the host into a chryssalid. When the process is over, all that's left is the host's skin and hair (since those are made of dead cells), with all the living tissues transformed into chryssalid. The only problem with this would be the extracellular matrix of the bones, but I guess the chryssies will never be 100% scientifically plausible no matter the explanation.
  10. Probably just a game mechanic, but still an interesting thought. The thing with this is that it MAJORLY impacts the in-game lore. Before implementing something like that, there would have to be a bit of discussion on how the alien society actually works, and how the different races interact. Hell, that's worth at least one thread of its own. SB1: This is Sectoid Base One! We are under attack, repeat, we are under attack! CC: Cydonia Command here. Identify the nature of your attackers and the scope of the assault, and we'll have reinforcements on the way as soon as feasible. SB1: It's...we can't...its X-co-.... CC: Sectoid Base 1? Sectoid Base 1, come in! Sectoid Base One? SB1: *cough* Haha, hi there, glorious and all-destroying supreme commanders. This is...um...*what are they called again? Oh, right* the Sectoid base. Y'know, Sectoids. We're short and have big heads. How you doing over there, your evilness? CC: ... SB1: Anyway...uh...sorry to bother your vileness, but...uh...we need some more supplies. Like, if you could send us a few shipments of elerium, crewed by floaters or snakemen (but no chryssalids), it would make crushing the puny hu-mons much easier. You might as well spare the expense of arming them too; we have things under control pretty well here, there shouldn't be any danger. CC: *nukes it from orbit*
  11. A simple solution for the base-taking mechanic might be this. After clearing out an alien base, you have two buttons labelled "Destroy" and "Occupy." If you decide to Destroy the base, it disappears off the map, just like in the classic games. If you decide to Occupy it, the base-menu comes up with your newly conquered base on it, and you can immediately start spending funds to convert alien facilities into your own. As others have said, this would be cheaper than building from scratch, but REALLY pisses off the aliens. On a related note, what about the possibility of aliens having Base Defenses? It always struck me as odd that you could shoot down incoming craft, but the aliens couldn't. I think the Defense system in general was way too simplistic; it would be nice if there could be a flightsim-type minigame for landing at an enemy base or defending one of your own, like the Interception system. I really like the suggested alien behaviors, particularly the "last fleeing alien." However, there'd need to be an incentive for the player to try to pursue the fugitive; a couple points more or less for bagging another corpse isn't much of a motivator for prolonging the mission. Additionally, I think some types of alien should flee, but others should not; some creatures would rather die than retreat. Actually, that's something that should be a major point throughout the game; vastly different behaviors for each race. Fighting Sectoids (or whatever) should feel really different from fighting Mutons (or whatever). Also, hi everyone!
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