IT's called the Mudranger, that's coool! Good for NKF, I love pixel art. I hope he's also a member on these forums. Does he have more pixel art? perhaps a deviantART page?
So the aliens would not only infiltrate governments for a "peace treaty", but they would also infiltrate factions, mafias, and biker gangs for disruption in the major cities. It's a great idea, I love it! Especially in the USA, we have many many gangs, groups, and societies which would want to take over the city if the local governments fell. One Chinese politician wrote an article about it says if they were to take over the USA by military force, they gotta deal with those gun groups and gangs. Small they may be, they won't go down without a fight.
Obviously, Aliens don't care about the human population or even anti-social gangs with armory, so they wouldn't have "on the table" negotiations, they would just use their mind control to "convince" the gangs to aid the aliens by becoming anti-humans! Just kill kill kill or do labor for setting up the alien bases and then becoming "part of the environment".
Luke you're awesome, you're gonna make this game even more deadly to my Operatives! They're getting out of the Skyranger and suddenly see a biker with an AK-47 firing at you next to a Sectoid or Snakemen! Holy shit! I imagine the movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", emotionless humans acting as if part of the hivemind taking orders until it dies. The Sectoids function as a hive-like society too.
I have a suggestion. I think you should make these gangs and factions fair game for the Terror units, like the Chryssalid and the Reaper. Those guys won't tell the difference and see humans as food or hatchery, so they'll attack on sight. Would that make sense? The reapers are under the control of the floaters, but as it says on the Wikia, "The primitive predatory instincts of this creature are of little use except to terrorize and destroy."
Last one. We should also be able to take one of those badly mind controlled gangsters with us for examination so the results would give us another plot device and clue to what else the aliens are doing on Earth.
I also really like your idea about Sectoids or Ethereal using civilians as soldiers. The first thing that popped into my head was that a Sectoid would prime an alien grenade for 3 turns, then throw it at a civi. Then the other alien would mind control that civi to pick up the grenade and take those 3 turns to look for an X-COM Operative and just wait right next to them until... BOOM! That's evil, isn't it ><.
