Ideas for new alien races?

[kharille]

I think they all tend to follow a certain pattern.  Intellectuals can have leaders and commanders.  Non smart types only have navigators and engineers.  And theres a choice between 1, 2 single square terrorist units or big 4 square units.

And maybe a robotic race?  I remember seeing some interesting art on potential alien races, some of which may be comical, and still fit in with the openxcom atmosphere.  Any thoughts?

[Danny]

I don't see why we need more... :\

Ethereals already command the Mutons who don't have Leaders or Commanders...
Ethereals and Sectoids have robotic terror units...

[kharille]

Just felt it would make a change.  And its brainstorming in case they might come in useful in some mod perhaps.  Just want to fire up the imagination.

[Warboy1982]

according to the canon, the aliens are trying to gain control of earth to further the war effort. what are they fighting AGAINST?

a greater threat than the alien brain surely exists. although we know nothing of it's nature. if i had to hazard a guess i'd go with self-replicating machines (stargate's replicators/the borg), the progenitors of the human race (the zentraedi, prometheus's engineers), a sentient AI (skynet, the geth), or something beyond our experience, something from Lovecraft's worst nightmares (babylon 5's shadows, mass effect's reapers)

[Gifty]

Speaking of, I found this while writing UFOpedia entries for Luke's alien palette-swap mod. It may give you some inspiration. It's also fun to read just because the author seems really serious about it.

[kharille]

?  So this was in the original xcom?  I finished the 2012 version recently and I remember they were seeking perfection, but I'm still messing around with my first playthrough of openxcom so I can't remember whether there were references to some 'alien unknown' out there.



If so, maybe humans will have to take the initiative to unify the aliens and fight off this greater power.  I wouldn't want a terror from the deep style copy, but larger maps, more units....  Wonder if we could take this further.

Maybe a different, macro perspective, less micro management new gameplay. 

Seriously, I think at later stages in the original game, you just get tired of combat missions and you just manage the aerial battles.  Maybe more work can be done on that....

[Danny]

according to the canon, the aliens are trying to gain control of earth to further the war effort. what are they fighting AGAINST?

a greater threat than the alien brain surely exists. although we know nothing of it's nature. if i had to hazard a guess i'd go with self-replicating machines (stargate's replicators/the borg), the progenitors of the human race (the zentraedi, prometheus's engineers), a sentient AI (skynet, the geth), or something beyond our experience, something from Lovecraft's worst nightmares (babylon 5's shadows, mass effect's reapers)

Wouldn't that be the aliens from Xcom apocalypse? XD
Sectoids actually joined the humans, with Human-Sectoid hybrids ^^

?  So this was in the original xcom?  I finished the 2012 version recently and I remember they were seeking perfection, but I'm still messing around with my first playthrough of openxcom so I can't remember whether there were references to some 'alien unknown' out there.

OpenXcom is based on the original, the 2012 Xcom is completely different... XD

[luke83]

 i am a firm believer there must of been another Race they were at war with, that is why there attacking our planet with all those Old Crapy ufo that you can shoot down with a pistol   (seriously, there so advanced, they want to take over our world yet our starting weapons can shoot them down, i don't think so).

I am a big support of FACTIONS for OXC, so maybe a random even when these guys show up (in limited numbers) and start building bases on earth also could be cool.

[Danny]

i am a firm believer there must of been another Race they were at war with, that is why there attacking our planet with all those Old Crapy ufo that you can shoot down with a pistol   (seriously, there so advanced, they want to take over our world yet our starting weapons can shoot them down, i don't think so).

You call battleships crappy?! XD

(small) scouts are just that SCOUTS!!!
Abductors, Harvesters and Supply-ships are for a certain functions NOT invasion... 
Terrorships are even mostly just to drop off troops...

If you listened to the brain in the original, they "seeded" humans in the past and now they are harvesting...
They (at least at first) never expected humans to fight back.... ^^

[54x]

according to the canon, the aliens are trying to gain control of earth to further the war effort. what are they fighting AGAINST?

a greater threat than the alien brain surely exists. although we know nothing of it's nature. if i had to hazard a guess i'd go with self-replicating machines (stargate's replicators/the borg), the progenitors of the human race (the zentraedi, prometheus's engineers), a sentient AI (skynet, the geth), or something beyond our experience, something from Lovecraft's worst nightmares (babylon 5's shadows, mass effect's reapers)

I'm not so sure it wasn't just everything that wasn't assimilated that was their enemy.

[Warboy1982]

If you listened to the brain in the original, they "seeded" humans in the past and now they are harvesting...
They (at least at first) never expected humans to fight back.... ^^

"They" huh?

[luke83]

You call battleships crappy?! XD

yes i do, if they have been around so long , they would be stringer , clearly we are not fighting there main army but the home guard Think "Dads Army" of Mars

[Danny]

"They" huh?

The aliens... XD

yes i do, if they have been around so long , they would be stringer , clearly we are not fighting there main army but the home guard Think "Dads Army" of Mars

Battleships are merely the first line of actual fighting ships...
Who KNOWS what their ultimate ship is...
Just look at the T'Leth... That thing is huge, at least 65 million years old and only a small part of what it once was... ^^

[Warboy1982]

is the brain on mars one of Them? if this is the brain, what does the body look like? if it's one of Them, what are They? if there are more of Them, where are They? was earth the only planet They seeded? why did They seed life here in the first place? why did They come back? why did They think we were somehow worth the expense of waging interplanetary war?

[moriarty]

The brain states that earth was seeded, and they (They?) intend to harvest, so I guess that the aliens never really waged war on us - they (They?) were on a big supply mission. the alien soldiers we encountered were really just on a backwater mission to gather resources from one of the planets they seeded long ago.

This might explain why we actually had a chance of defeating them (Them?).

Did they (or They?) intend us to develop as far as we did, though? What is their usual regime for seeded planets? do they (They?) usually return after just a few centuries, harvesting biomatter? or is it normal for them (Them?) to wait until technological civilizations have developed, to also harvest refined materials from the planets? have they (They?) simply waited too long before returning to earth, so that they faced a rebellious group of more-or-less intelligent and more-or-less advanced ape-descendants that were determined enough to fight and defeat them?

perhaps there really is a huge-scale interstellar war raging, and they (They?) were distracted. when the war started to turn against them (Them?), they tried to gather what resources they (They?) could, and returned to the small blue planet which they (They?) had seeded long ago.