The Veteran Posted October 29, 2002 Report Share Posted October 29, 2002 Maybe they were the real evolutionary strand but when they aquired this cancer type thingy giving them telepathy and whatnot, they decided to create a new race and give them the appearance of what Ethereals would have evolved into in a century or so if they hadn't become infected... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JellyfishGreen Posted October 29, 2002 Report Share Posted October 29, 2002 Characters: As you can see, I'm creating characters wherever required, and don't see the death of one or two as a reason to stop writing. None of them are _me_. Although I look forward to sharing in the experiences of them and all the other characters. The more background we get, the easier it is to give them some substance in the writing, but if they're cannon fodder, it's not worth it. Hope this helps TFTD. Remember the game has dozens of scientists on each project, so the scientist characters are really team leaders or head researchers who will be given underlings. One could do psi-amp and the other psi-lab? Psionics: The 'controlled cancer' explanation of psionic implants sounds interesting. The Sectoids are vat-grown by Ethereals, after all, and the odd batch could concievably be grown into Sectoid Leaders. Maybe that purple glob on the side of the psi-amp is a cultured living organ, XCOM's version with an electronic interface? It's funny that you have to know a physical location to establish a psionic link. But even quantum particles have to have a location, and I guess you dial in on that with the Psi-amp, then fine-tune the frequency with your psi-skill - and Psi-Strength determines whose mind wins when that connection is established. (As I idly thought to myself while my psuperman picked out an Ethereal Commander during a base defence like he was sorting apples in a barrel.) UFO Recovery: The realistic recovery of a supply ship, say, would involve a few dozen workers with flatbed cranes and acetylene torches loading up shipping containers with hull sections. These woud be hauled out by trucks on a temporary road to the nearest port or rail point, or by cargo helicopters like the Mi-26 Halo if available. And of course there'd have to be site security. All of this would be arriving an hour or two behind the supersonic Skyranger, so the original team would have to keep the site secured until they could hand over operations. The Skyranger might be evacuating the wounded during this time. Presumably they could take some choice artifacts and captured aliens back for immediate research when they lift off and return to base. Vet proposes the Skyranger can and will carry a jet or a small UFO in a sling - aerodynamics would keep this from being hypersonic, wouldn't it? Any suggestions? Should we allow it and just carefully not mention too much detail about how long it takes getting back to base? I think the game has all recovered components arrive back when the Skyranger does, to make the programming simple. But I'd rather have the Skyranger realistic than to try and accomodate this game mechanic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Veteran Posted October 29, 2002 Report Share Posted October 29, 2002 Right sounds good but that leaves us with two things to sort out. The Skyranger could easily carry the Interceptor back, but it probably won't. I hadn't actually thought of this until this question came up but now that Davies is flying with France it's perfectly acceptable for him to pilot the Hurricane back. As for UFO recovery... I don't know we'll put that to the people I guess. We need the items from the mission as soon as the skyranger returns otherwise we have a massive gap of time when no research can be done on new items because they're stuck at the customs desk in Sydney airport... (Or the company has mixed up our bags again and we'll end up with a shipment of baking powder and chocolate bars...) The other thing is Psionics. I like the cancer idea that says the psionic capabilities of the aliens is a kind of cancer. It could provide them with a second sight or telapathic ability. This is what happened to the ethereals, explaining why they're so physically weak. The Ethereal race then decided that the soldiers they fought with may also be able to benefit from this ability and finding that the more intelligent sectoids were almost perfectly suited to it they introduced the virus into their cloning vats.And yes that is pretty much exactly the same as an old post as I plucked it straight out of one!Then there was the idea that sectoids ARE Ethereals but just not as telepathically advanced... So maybe when the original race developed the cancer an immunity was developed in some of the creatures. These became sectoids... The aliens that retained the disease were the Ethereals... So what does everyone think about it? Any other views? And you JFish, you didn't really say what you thought about that... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zager Posted October 29, 2002 Report Share Posted October 29, 2002 About the UFO recovery, shouldn't the scientists get the opportunity to go over the remains before it gets moved? That way anything that might be easily breakable can be secured. My character, at least, wouldn't want anything touched by the grunts until he had an opporunity to examine it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Veteran Posted October 29, 2002 Report Share Posted October 29, 2002 Hmm, good idea. They would presumably want to check out the site of the UFO before it was dismantled wouldn't they... Could Pine Gap perhaps have a HUGE transport on the topside airbase for bringing back the alien technology and stuff after they've been examined by the scientists and sliced up by the techs? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zager Posted October 30, 2002 Report Share Posted October 30, 2002 Why not just simply request that nation that the crash site or landed UFO is in provide a transport for it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JellyfishGreen Posted October 30, 2002 Report Share Posted October 30, 2002 Or the nearest pact-signing country with such an aircraft. Lots of fun trying to shoot down then smuggle a UFO out of, say, Libya. Might make for an interesting segment of the future fic. Blowing up the China base in the Kansai Arc story nearly started WWIII. We aren't sticking to research times exactly as in the game, are we? I'd rather have scientific breakthroughs or failures occur wherever they made a good story and raised the dramatic tension. So consider the total research time as inclusive of the time taken to get the materials back from the landing site, if you want. It'll only be mentioned a few times by the scientists anyway, I think - the third time you recover a UFO, you only want to know what was different from the first two times. Sectoids/Ethereals: I think Sectoids were a separate race, then the Brain/Ethereal civilization came along and assimilated them as a servant race. Since then they've been reproduced only as clones and modified using Ethereal genetic technology, until their DNA is now 99.86% similar. Snakemen, Floaters, etc. are also conquered races but more crudely manipulated than the Sectoids. Somewhere out there are the original home planets, and a whole lot of Ethereals with even stranger servant races, and one day they'll wonder what happened to the harvest they expected from the Earth they seeded so long ago. Thanks for asking. - JG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zager Posted October 31, 2002 Report Share Posted October 31, 2002 How long's it going to be before someone posts in the fan fiction? I want to post, damnit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Veteran Posted October 31, 2002 Report Share Posted October 31, 2002 We can't just stick a UFO on a military transport aircraft. The military doesn't even know about XCom or the aliens. The governments do sure but not the army... There's too much of a chance that the information may leak out.I'd agree with the research though definitely. This is supposed to run alongside the game but it's a lot more important that it makes a good story so research depends a lot more on the current plot than anything else...I would say that sectoids weren't a race until the Ethereals aquired their psionics. Then as their bodies weakened they needed an army to replace them. Snakemen and Floaters were definitely conquered races. Floaters were probably peaceful before the Ethereals got to them but wouldn't you be a bit peeved if someone shoved a metal sphere up your backside? The Snakemen were probably conquered psionically as they were a soldier race and could easily beat Ethereals in all out warfare without psionics. The reapers were probably wild animals from home and the cyberdisks and sectopods are clearly manufactured! That leaves Chryssalids, Celatids and Silacoids... Probably genetically spliced creatures from home... So I reckon the sectoids were made as kind of a healthy version of miniature Ethereals but they turned out to be a bit buggy, not a joke... But it meant only some of them used Psionics... That'd be my guess at least.And I want to post in it Zager but I don't know what to write so I haven't really been able to! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zager Posted October 31, 2002 Report Share Posted October 31, 2002 You forgot the mutons, I'd say those were the genetically engineered replacement army. I think that maybe the sectoids are more of an ally of the Etherals, a second-species in command, so to speak. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocFrance Posted October 31, 2002 Report Share Posted October 31, 2002 You do realize, we still have a C-5 at Pine Gap. That thing could easily accomodate a large UFO, if it were sliced up first. Let me put it this way - a Galaxy can carry three Apache helos, or two M-1 Tanks. It's the second largest aircraft in the world. Big, slow, and ugly - that's what they're good at. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zager Posted October 31, 2002 Report Share Posted October 31, 2002 The only problem is that Zager won't let you slice it up, since he needs to have it intact as possible. Slicing it up to transport it isn't an option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocFrance Posted November 1, 2002 Report Share Posted November 1, 2002 Yes, but something like a supply ship isn't that easy to carry whole..., especially when its about 10 times the size of a Skyranger. I'm sure he wouldn't mind the alien alloy hull being cut into manageable pieces, and individual components disconnected, etc, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Posted November 1, 2002 Report Share Posted November 1, 2002 The game always slices up the alien stuff. You never get an intact craft back to the base. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zager Posted November 1, 2002 Report Share Posted November 1, 2002 And who will do this disconnecting? How would you know what to disconnect? How would know what components would be ruined if they were disconnected from the power source? The only way he'd possibly agree to that would be if he got to go over the entire thing with a team of technicians. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Veteran Posted November 1, 2002 Report Share Posted November 1, 2002 Is it just me or has everyone forgotten that Cheeseman is currently flying the Galaxy back to it's military base? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocFrance Posted November 1, 2002 Report Share Posted November 1, 2002 Yes, but that can easily be edited. I think the description was maybe 1 or 2 lines. We could say we reported the aircraft as crashed in the Pacific, and make a bit of a cover story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ki-tat Chung Posted November 2, 2002 Report Share Posted November 2, 2002 Okonomiyaki: go here to see some recipies and some info. https://www.dragonsong.com/ranma/okonomiyak...aki.cfm?Speed=1ramen: just chinese noodles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Veteran Posted November 2, 2002 Report Share Posted November 2, 2002 I'm not even going to think about going there!And Docif the Galaxy crashes in the pacific then we lose it anyway and we may lose the pilot too.We can't edit it so that the plane doesn't go out becasue that would mean all of the pilots training would have to be edited to account for Cheeseman staying at base. He has nothing to practise in anyway so why bother? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ki-tat Chung Posted November 2, 2002 Report Share Posted November 2, 2002 so is it gonna be crash or edit? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Veteran Posted November 2, 2002 Report Share Posted November 2, 2002 No. Cheeseman is taking the Galaxy back to it's military base, the location of which I don't THINK I specified... He'll then return to Pine Gap via the ordinary plane, train civvie means of transport being collected from the nearest airport to PineGap. The craft we use to return the UFOs to base will either already be stationed at Pine Gap or (my preferable option) Noone will notice that we need one until Cheeseman arrives and then he'll have to be sent away again to get it back! Poor him! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ki-tat Chung Posted November 3, 2002 Report Share Posted November 3, 2002 he'll be busy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Veteran Posted November 3, 2002 Report Share Posted November 3, 2002 Too right he will. Especially with European public transport being as bad as it is! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JellyfishGreen Posted November 7, 2002 Report Share Posted November 7, 2002 Offtopic: I'm in Germany without internet access this week and this message is all I can smuggle out. Normal verbosity should return next week...Achtung! must go now! Edit Nov 12: Is back! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JellyfishGreen Posted November 12, 2002 Report Share Posted November 12, 2002 Is back! Note to Vet & Ki-tat: "reported crashed" is not the same as "crashed". Not in black ops like this one. I think Doc is saying Cheeseman and the Galaxy disappear from the Army roster under some cover story and reappear in the service of X-COM when required. Not necessarily stationed at Pine Gap, as we have a worldwide support team. In any case, we'll get the UFO hull sections back to base in a day or two* and the timeline won't be seriously affected. As long as the components are loaded into the Galaxy (or whatever) in standard sealed shipping containers, we can use the Army transport system and they shouldn't have a clue what we're really shipping. I'm sure we can think of a cover story. *Sea shipments could take a few weeks, but alien alloy typically would be shipped this way, nothing critical for research. Critical stuff could come back with the strike team if the techs load it onto the Skyranger before it takes off again - live aliens, for instance? Oh yeah, Zager: my General's Brief post did mention a tech team follows each recovery team once the site is secure. Zager could be on that team, if he doesn't mind getting his feet dirty. PS. I like okonomiyaki too. The one I ate in Japan was served with mayonnaise and tuna flakes on top. But still good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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