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The Alien Goal


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However, the Vaaish detect a *fuzzy plot mechanism* on Earth, so they cannot bomb earth

 

 

fuzzy plot could be datalogs retrieved from the t'leth, these datalogs contain the location of the alien origins/homeworlds. Vaaish need this info to ensure complete destruction of all alien species

 

After the vaaish are defeated these datalogs could leave it open for a sequel so to speak.

 

just a thought, sorry if i'm outta place :D

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So would this be an acurate summary of what we've decided so far about the role of the vaaish in our storyline? The overmind sends a small portion of it's force down to earth to use the humans as warriors in order to battle the Vaaish. The humans defeat the overmind and before it can send another task force the Vaaish defeat them easily using their super-powerful energy shields to prevent the overminds plasma weapons from doing any harm. Then they come to earth, which, unfortunatley for them, is the first planet they've encountered with enough technology to attack thier ships and is also very familiar with the concept of a projectile weapon, which is unfortunate for them because they've been developing energy shields for hundreds of years. Also, they do not blow the Earth up immediatly because there is valuable data on the location of other alien species.

 

And the player's not going to know anything about the overminds plan before the end, right? Because it does kind of detriment the whole aliens BAD, humans GOOD concept, as I believe someone mentioned before.

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And the player's not going to know anything about the overminds plan before the end, right? Because it does kind of detriment the whole aliens BAD, humans GOOD concept, as I believe someone mentioned before.

 

Huh?

If I understand you correctly, I think we should have it known that the overmind wants to enslave humanity. Sure killing us is evil, but subverting us and using us as slaves is even more evil imo. We will know nothing of the motivations of the Vaaish until the end (when you capture one of the Vaaish Leaders [or ruling council.] havn't decided yet.)

 

The Vaaish have never fought an enemy that had such incredible ingenuity until they met us. Then, they couldn't resort to their standard tactic of nuking us to death because they need data from the aqua aliens' datavualts. The Vaaish are unaccoustomed to fighting a ground war with a race that uses weapons their shields can't asorb (like ap)

 

The Vaaish genrally (when nuking a planet) stay out of range of any projectile defenses (such as nuclear missiles) or use their point defense weapons to shoot them down. (A new addition, spur of the moment type stuff.)

 

Therefore, 1/2 of all missiles launched at a vaaish ship would be destroyed before impact.

 

Basically, all the aliens are evil. Overmind is evil (it had a slave empire before the Vaaish War) Vaaish are evil (they want to annhilate all other sentient life), aqua aliens are evil (they want to perform hideous experiments on us) And Humans are good, we are always defending our planet, we aren't attacking the vaaish homeworld or the overmind's planets are we? (except mars.)

 

Edit: Maby we should invade the Vaaish homeworld? Hmm...

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maybe instead of a full blown invasion to start of with, we could take a similar appoach to that of the overmind.

 

First the X-com fleet enters vaaish homeworld system, finds nearby planet, inhabits, calls the planet bannana, uses bannana as a staging point to conduct terrorist and raid missions on vaaish homeworld. Humans use data collected from T & raid missions for research, while they try to defend bannana from the continuous vaaish counter invasions.

 

These terrorist and raid missions can also be used as a delay tactic. Slowing down the vaaish war effort until the main body of the human invasion fleet arrives.

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Hmm, nice! I like it!

 

But, it would need to be worked out way before we even think of adding it.

Perhaps xcom won't call in the cavalry unless they take out a certain target (such as a super massive vaaish shipyard) ?

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Well the Vaaish invasion could take 3 forms

 

form 1:

Set missions required for the human fleet to arrive and begin invasion

eg. capture major vaaish city to secure a drop zone.

 

then after completed goto Form 2:

 

also have

Alternate missions such as warehouse raids, capture "political" figures ect...

 

Form 2: straight invasion

You could have the human invasion act like the biomass from Ufo:Aftermath. You could have Vaaish military bases stopping the invasion in certain sectors, then X-Com have to go in a clear out the base.

 

 

Form 3:

X-Com capture a vaaish ship, replicate the "Nuke missiles", fly to Vaaish home planet and nuke'em.... end of story (this would save the programers alot of work)

 

Form 3a: (more of a end movie)

X-Com capture vaaish ship, fly it to Vaaish homeworld undetected, Nuke Vaaish the end.

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Just a nudge to keep this thread discussing version 1 storyline, try to keep discussion of possible future plots in the labs please, thanks.
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Maybe just a hint at the end...the dying overmind says something like "You fools...I was your only chance of survivng the Vaaish...after they have finished with me, they will come for your puny planet as well! Hwa ha ha ha *gurgle, choke, stagger about dramatically, sing an aria about its life, then die*"

 

-The Captian

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Very nice! I like it! That should be possible for us to do in v1 right? :) Hmm, now just need to ask Vaaish if we can use his name...

 

Hmm, if we go that route, we should make the war with the aqua aliens like a rest before we throw the super powerful Vaaish at you.

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Man, this seems rather unfortunate for the humans. "sigh, that's the third alian attack we've had to barely manage to fend off in just 5 years." ^_^

 

Oh well, at least some sadistic commandar sitting in an office chair looking at all his little troops running around like ants on a glass screen is gonna get a kick out of it. ^_^

Edited by Ancalagon
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Man, this seems rather unfortunate for the humans. "sigh, that's the third alian attack we've had to barely manage to fend off in just 5 years." 

 

Well, thats the point right? :D The commander is supposed to have fun blowing up his rookies! :devillaugh:

Edited by Cpl. Facehugger
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  • 2 months later...

I really prefer mikker's story, it fits in perfectly IMO.

 

We definately should have more ground missions with civilians in Xenocide. When ships have landed on abduction and interdiction missions there should be civilians present on the landing site. Makes the landed UFO missions more difficult so you really might want to shoot them down before they get to the site.

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HHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLPPPPPPPP!!!!

To many different stories me confused!!!!!!!!!

 

I thought we were making a clone

so why are we making a story?

 

your ruining the mystery of the not being told.

 

its like a film. eg. jeepers kreepers ok when u dont know wot it is. when u do it suddenly becomes a steaming great mountain of horse 5hite

Edited by Kamikazee
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if you have to go making stories do the good old self destruction thingy me bob

 

eg.

 

ages and ages ago we had loadsa cool technology. we sent guys out to another world etc. etc. their technology eventually devastates them through some disaster, eg. war. then we on earth think oh pooh, we get rid of our tech, and as a cover story to stop people reinventing stuff they create false science= religion. explain technology through magic etc. so noone has a clue and eventually technology forgotten.

now the guys on other world want revenge for us abandoning them. oh pooh we have less tech than them . da da. Xenocide begins

 

not the best story but you can tell only pieces of it add bits etc. for mystery

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There is a distinction to Xenocide versus an X-Com 'remake'. This is not a remake but rather a game inspired by X-Com. It's a legal distinction among other things. We want to recreate the gameplay of the original, and because we know the original was balanced we're not introducing new features, etc until after v1 is out so we can shorten development time by removing gametesting for balance.

 

So it boils down to earth in 10 years being attacked by these aliens based on Mars. Whether they attack because of reason A or B doesn't matter all that much really to the player except for after-the-fact explanations. At most this particular text would be part of a user guide, along with alien history and all the things you might be familiar with in a game like Warcraft. While this text isn't needed for the game, it provides a framework for people who wish to write stories based on the game. Personally I consider this type of text "back burner" priority, but people can work on whatever they like.

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The storyline in the original was "Aliens from outerspace invade to conquer the earth so they can use us in horrible genetic experiments."

 

TFTD was "Aliens from the deep ocean invade to conquer the earth so they can...um...well, just because they're cranky after oversleeping for 65 million years." (no real reason was given that I can remember).

 

We're trying to expand upon it...not changing the core idea (Aliens invade to use us in experiments), but adding a bit more substance to it...giving the aliens a reason to invade, and explaining why they don't just show up with a few hundred battleships and lay waste to our civilisation.

 

-The Captain

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Here is mikker's story that he posted earlier in this thread (don't understand how you could have missed it)

 

1) a few 1.000 years after the ammonites departure from Earth, they have evolved into the Ethereals, and got a brain etc. They build a overcaled battleship and takes off to take over the planet Mars with is just as living as Earth. however they misscalculate the dirrections and they crash into the outher moon of Mars, with partically destroys most of it, and sending the rest if it pouring down the planet. The battleship then gets catched with Mars' gravity, and gets dragged down. It also hits the other moon at downfall, reesulting in even more debris. At this point the aliens have been alerted, and goes into crypto state (those freezing champers). The batteship crash and the main computer shuts down, and didn't wake them up again.

 

All the moon debris, and also the big battleship crashing, resulted in the destruction of all life on Mars.

 

When we send radio commands into space, it hits the main computer, and sets it on. The aliens wake up, and builds the new base. The aliens see that we are too great for them to handle now, and decides to get help from the aqualiens. Those aliens are in a similar state, but didn't wake up. The brain knows that those aliens are "good" aliens, and it decides to send a big beam down to it waking them up, and at the same time mindcontroling them all in the process (you are really vulnorable when you wakeing up from crypto state). But it takes time to build it, and they need resources (Including organical with can now only be found on Earth). They decide to invade Earth, and insets a certain tactic with makes it look like they are more then they acturly are. They are more then enougth to take over Earth, but they need to build more ships to do a full-scale invasion, and they also need to build the big cannon. They takes some samples from Earth, and starts harvesting...

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how about using the principals in apoc (dont shout at me) that a microorganism thingy lives in the aliens like a parasite controlling them.

in X1-2 we wont know about them but we gradually are given clues.

 

then we could say they are invading because they need hosts.

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ok so basically they have space travel , plasma rifles, metallic alloys that appear out of no where to build a battle ships & bases, we have overpopulation and sticks that shoot metal balls and a plane crash every 10 days.

 

Are you sure that aliens would'nt rather just cull us instead of using us in some great intergallatic breeding program? :huh:

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Read the premis behind the Vaaish war (sorry Vaaish, but we haven't got a new name yet). Esentially, sentient races with any appreciable level of technology are very rare...because any time one sticks it's head up, the Vaaish exterminate them.

 

HUmanity may not be very advanced compared to the overmind and the Vaaish, but a drowning man will grasp at anything...and the Overmind are fighting for their survival. We're better than nothing...and you never know what you might get.

 

 

-The Captain

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That reminds me of Stewart's original story.

which it was based on ^_^

 

i was only trying to give an explanation WHY the life on mars was destroyed. An idea to why they try to take over the sea aliens, could be that they need soldiers, which blends in perfectly with the Vaaich-idea. But they find out that they need more troops, and they also try to get control of humanity.

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I like the idea that aliens won't just destroy earth because they need it. It would be easy for them to bomb the whole planet but they need it as much as us so they won't. It's just that in X-Net we are explaining that aliens won't survive in earth atmosphere very long so there's a little contradiction. Maybe earth atmosphere would be easier to revise for alien needs than mars for example. So they need our planet for their own living?
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  • 2 weeks later...
Are you sure that aliens would'nt rather just cull us instead of using us in some great intergallatic breeding program?

 

Not neccesarily. The aliens would probably just view us as a mildly amusing ant farm behind the "glass pane" of hundres of thousands of miles of empty space.

 

I would like to see a history of the aliens dating back to ancient times. You could have something like:

 

The aliens originally came to the solar system as the remenants of a once great race looking for a planet to settle on. They found one: Mars, which back then was like Earth. Shortly after they landed something went horrible wrong and the atmosphere got ripped off the planet, and all the water froze up and so on.

 

They had enough resources to set up a small coloney, but they looked around to see if they could find a better solution to, hopefully, colonise in full one day.

 

And so they looked upon the newly formed earth with its water and basic atmosphere and decided to seed it with life and wait for the planet to develop to the diversity theat Mars had once been.

 

As Earth developed it became a fascinating experiment for the alien race, and was studied very closely for a very long time. Then one day humans turn up and the aliens, not expecting a sentient race, are taken a little bit by surprise. So they begin studying us with renewed interest to see if we can be used or exploited in some way. They decide not to destroy us because that would interfere with the development of the planet, which they want to be totally independent. But when we start venturing into space and looking in the direction of Mars, the aliens change their minds. They switch their research to finding ways to exterminate us, and decide to target the civilian populations conducting campaigns aimed at terrorising and subjugating the divided nations of Earth. This is where the game begins, with aliens increasing thier activities and getting ready to take over. However they completely underestimate our resolve, despite out lower technology, and the human race wins the day.

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Here's some interesting science, that I think you'll like.

 

Mitochondria are little parts of human cells, that have their own DNA. They are used to provide energy to the cell, just a little trivia FYI.

 

Well, Scientists have studied the DNA of mitochondria, and made a startling discovery. There is an unusual pattern of diversity in the DNA of mitochondrial cells. So unusual, that they believe the mitochondria evovled from a very small population, somewhere around 10,000 :o, very long ago.

 

They've theorised that at some time in human evolution, there was a population of no more than 10,000 people. So at some time in history, they think that everyone except that many people died...

 

... Or there were only that many people to begin with. :) 10,000 sounds like a good number of people for aliens to "seed" a planet with. And there's some science to back it up! ^_^

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The way a planets ecological system works is like a loop, averything from the rain cycle, to the life and death cycle are renewable. Our planet was formed by space debris combining to create this planet, and today many millions of tonnes of space dust and minerals land all the time. Maybe the aliens plan was not for us to become them but just to be terraformers. terraforming the landscape keeping the cycle going to speed up the development of the planet so it would become an eden suitable for them to live in.

Then we either:

__evolve unlike all the other "terraformers" they put on other planets and when they come to take the planet they find it is home to metropolises and etc. They are intrested in what caused this to happen so they study us and carry on as you will.

__or after putting us on several planets they find all the mars, europa (other hospitable planets) terraformers have died, therefore they abandon the system (dunno why) then hey presto when they come back because they require the planet urgently for resources for some war etc. they find us and are kinda shocked, carry on as you will

 

So their reasons could be nothing to do with us, more so to do with colonisation.

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or...

 

they could have placed 'template' humanoids on each planet and waited for them to evolve into new troops for them to use (explains variety of aliens)

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thats an interesting idea, and when we grew up out of the mud, they came to have a look at us and take a few of us to pieces to see how good we where.

 

We take exception to this, shoot down a few craft, aliens get ratty,

:argue:

some civilians get killed, we get angry, and its a great big fight.

:boxing:

 

needs padding though

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In most cases, simple is the finest. Just like that MagicAndys idea. 75% of players are not interested about all that babble we put in CTs. Most of the players probably would like a simple story, not something that needs days to think about to understand why something is happening..
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but we still need padding for the people who love a good story

 

I'm beginning to like you Nyyperoid btw, following me about and agreeing with everthing I say! :D

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Compare the back story to the plot in the Matix perhaps. The more they told you, the more you wish they wouldn't... soon every tiny little thing has an in-depth explanation, because the writers didn't expect you could figure anything out on your own.

 

I think there needs to be a definite balance to what the player is told in the game via the X-Net. People can write hundreds of pages of detail, but what part of that is the player actually told? A comparison can be made here to the alien species research. After you study a live [sectoid] for example, what would you know about the typical one? All the conclusions or theories would be based on what you observed in the lab, the very few behaviors witnessed in the field during its capture, and maybe 1 or 2 news stories about locals being abducted by "little grey men". You wouldn't know about their social hierarchy or culture based on these things. Likewise, the aliens aren't going to explain in intimate detail where they came from and how they developed either. Only with the use of mind probes and the like would you get the minimum details (btw, is the mind probe research required for some of this research?), and that's my point here. A player would learn that the aliens have been ordered to take over the planet with minimal loss of life, etc (whatever a military commander might be told), but not the intimate details of every aspect. I think the backstory thread/text would be an ideal place for the more indepth details, but something like the alien goal would be relatively short in comparison. Does that make sense, and is it agreeable to people? Sort of a "explain the alien's goal, in 500 words or less". :)

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Yes thats one thing i've been very worried about. Just think why do we want another XCOM in the first place. To recreate the experience and to cure our curiousities about the aliens etc and what will happen next etc. We should add more detail but not precise detail, just enough so that 75% are satisfied and content, and for people like us create hints kinda like FFVII (if you played it). It was rather a sh1t game but the story (if a bit shitty at times) was well planned, The story basically was about some company destroying the earth and then some madman going crazy but hints were dropped in as to the character's past and history of the world.
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leaving many possible story lines for the player to invent, which would obviously suit their personality. (they made it)

as for my story I KNOW IT WAS SH1T

I was simply trying to spark up an idea in somebody for a reason why the massively powerful empire of aliens didn't kick our @rses.

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oops forgot to add.

 

We should make a definite story. every detail include 100%. Then when we know what we want we can strategically remove bits of info told to the player to make a good story. (kinda like a murder mystery program [which i hate], they tell u one vague thing and u assume a story. then the info is added to which contradicts that etc etc etc. all based on a simple story (for the less imaginative)

 

Sorry but ive had a stroke of genius (or insanity)

 

Why dont we have an option avery time an XNET (or new game) is started to view the normal report lame short nobrainer

or the extensive version which is kick @$$

 

just an idea. Best of both worlds

Edited by Kamikazee
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I know its a slightly tired idea, but no more so than just having aliens invade cause they can. Here is my idea:

 

------------------------------------------------------------

Approximately 2-3 billion years ago the first sentient race spread across the universe. Finding it to be a very cold and lonely place they used their super-advanced technology to place the seeds of life in thousands upon thousands of systems. Most of these genetic seedings proved inviable or limited in potential, but two of the earlier seedings proved to have nearly limitless potential for development. Each of these species, as they advanced and began to expand out from their homeworld found ruins of a great intergalatic civilization that existed before they had crawled from the primordial ooze. It wasn't long before these two advanced races discovered each other. Almost immediately they became great enemies. This was due to the genetic codes that the elder race has used. Every race that spawned from thed Elder's manipulation was geared to seek dominance over every other species they encountered. It was discovered by each of these races that the majority of sentient life in the universe had evolved from similar genetic sequences. Therefore it was deduced that if a sample of the master genetic strain could be found, psionic control could be imposed more easily as well as the development of other races and technology exploiting this ultimate knowledge.

 

The last group of elders, finished with their quest to seed the universe with life, retired to a small planet in a remote solar system in a non-descript galaxy to await the results of their project. Even with all of their advanced technology, they had not solved the ultimate riddle and were doomed to eventually die. After several thousand years of scanning the nearby galaxies (those that had been most heavily seeded) the last of the Elders finally sealed itself into the cryotomb with the others for preservation, and released the lifeseeds on the rest of the planet.

 

These lifeseeds eventually developed into the various races and species present on Earth, including the Ammonites. This sentient race began its advance, and ultimately have brought us to where we are today.

 

The Overmind has been able to track the movements of the Elders down to this general sector of space. It knows that the Sol system was one of the last seeded by the Elders directly, so it is operating under the assumption that a viable sample of the master DNA strain should be somewhere in the system. A base was originally set up at Cydonia because it was thought that the remnants there might have been Elder ruins, and while it was proven that the Elders did build them no evidence of Elder DNA could be found there. And so the Overmind's eye turned to Earth, the last planet in the system with a viable ecosystem. But caution had to be taken so as not to disrupt the ecosystem before the DNA strand could be found. The humans show a highly derivative DNA structure, but there is simply no other place for it to be. Their goal is to take control of the planet so that they can use us not only as resources for the war with the [Vaaish] but also because all logic says there must be some Elder DNA here, if it is anywhere. And it would be much easier to find if they had everyone on the planet under their control and looking for it.

Edited by Anthraxus
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I'm beginning to like you Nyyperoid btw, following me about and agreeing with everthing I say!

I guess you are so damn wise! :D

 

I think there needs to be a definite balance to what the player is told in the game via the X-Net. People can write hundreds of pages of detail, but what part of that is the player actually told?

But which is better, a story with intentional holes in it or a story which gives more than one solution to why everything is happening? With good story telling, we could give them an intrigue which they could revise in their own heads. Everyone would have a little bit different idea of all that is happening! Or maybe I'm dreaming a bit too big dreams..

 

Good story Anthraxus. Leaves me the question who are these elders? Is it the Vaaish that Cpl. Facehugger always talks about? ^_^

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Actually I was setting it up so that the Overmind and Vaaish were the two high potential races that developed from the Elders initial projects. The ones that started to expand and ran into each other and became instant enemies. I was trying to set it up as a back drop to Breunor's Origin story.
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