[WIP] Leader plus - Suggestions and opinions needed

[pilot00]

In general, I think armour is something that is missing from aliens and would be a nice addition.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Damn sectoids are running around naked, nobody cared to give them a jump suit or something?

[Solarius Scorch]

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Damn sectoids are running around naked, nobody cared to give them a jump suit or something?

They're the ultimate mages. No armour.

[Arthanor]

I think it sort of works for sectoids if you think of them as throwaway biological drones. The aliens just mass produce them with clone vats and send them to probe planets/feed them to the meat grinder. When things get rowdier, other species more suited for fighting show up. At least floaters are a little bit armoured.

For a society that has mastered such an energy source as elerium (and presumably can obtain it from somewhere), even building the UFOs can't be that difficult, so "wasting" sectoids+plasma weapons+UFOs is not too big of a deal. The reason they don't swarm the Earth would be logistics: they produce those things far away, not on Mars, and they can only devote so much to Earth because they are in other conflicts too.

It kind of works with the brain being a control node but not the real big boss, and Elerium not being anywhere in the solar system and how they don't win despite the huge technological advantage that they have. When humans destroy the brain, they stop the invasion because the main empire decides we're not worth the trouble for now, not because they can't beat us. Maybe they'll come back later..!

[Solarius Scorch]

That's an interesting post, Arthanor. I would like to add that while the aliens as a whole indeed have so much more resources available to them - in terms of energy, population and technology - the ones fighting on Earth do not have reliable supply routes and actually are quite short on materials and people. They perhaps mine Mars to a certain degree and must have industrial facilities that are wonderfully efficient, but it's all small scale; Cydonia is a military base, not an industrial centre. That's why their modus operandi is to use whatever is available, like bio-engineered Earth organisms, Sectoids that are easy to clone using Earth biomass, as well as services of human traitors. Their plan is to conquer the planet using human governments, not their own armies, because there's not enough of them. (Though I suppose they could just fusion bomb us, but genocide is clearly not their objective.)

[Arthanor]

Yeah, I very much agree with that. I think the aliens coming to Earth is similar to how we would feel if we came across a planet where the dominant species is earth dogs being the only survivors years after a colony ship crashed (XCom makes some hints that at least some life on Earth is due to the aliens).

We'd get there and try to tame/dominate the dogs, confident in our "victory" (between quotes because it's not even really a battle as far as we're concerned). Since dogs are such simple creatures, we'd expect them to be easily cowed so we wouldn't need to setup much of a military, just setup a new colony.

But then the dogs fight back! They turned into feral beasts that can't really be handled. We use whatever supply mechanism we have to send soldiers/exterminators instead of explorers but it takes a long time to get there and we still are convinced that we will easily be able to handle the dogs. Until we lose all contact and decide that we have bigger fish to fry than the dog planet; like seducing the mermaid planet or fighting the bug invasion.

But.. we're getting quite far from topic.. All that to say that sectoids sort of make sense naked, they are scouts/colonists (they comprised most of the crew of the alien colony ship that became T'leth) but that some armour is good on the later species, especially their leaders. Except for ethereals and sectoids, the other species seem to be very much bred to fight violently (rather than tactically), in which case it makes sense to have the bigger/nastier ones be the leaders.

[pilot00]

I think it sort of works for sectoids if you think of them as throwaway biological drones. The aliens just mass produce them with clone vats and send them to probe planets/feed them to the meat grinder. When things get rowdier, other species more suited for fighting show up. At least floaters are a little bit armoured.

For a society that has mastered such an energy source as elerium (and presumably can obtain it from somewhere), even building the UFOs can't be that difficult, so "wasting" sectoids+plasma weapons+UFOs is not too big of a deal. The reason they don't swarm the Earth would be logistics: they produce those things far away, not on Mars, and they can only devote so much to Earth because they are in other conflicts too.

It kind of works with the brain being a control node but not the real big boss, and Elerium not being anywhere in the solar system and how they don't win despite the huge technological advantage that they have. When humans destroy the brain, they stop the invasion because the main empire decides we're not worth the trouble for now, not because they can't beat us. Maybe they'll come back later..!

I love lore discussions, 

While most of your points do make sense, we should remember that the sectoids are as much the protagonists of the franchise as the etherials themselves. Sectoid lore tells us that though they are genetically engineered by the head honchos and all that, they seek to break away from this artificial sterility. They also have somekind of hive scociety,in fact its the only alien entry that speaks of an individual race having such a thing. The mutons for example while been a full fledged race with no discernable gene modification, are completely enthralled to the etherials to the point that they die if deprived if such control. If I were to call something biological robots, it would be the mutons,floaters,crysalids and snakemen really. Though they are not genetecally engineered, their state is nothing more than expendable tools.

IMHO sectoids can be seen as victims in this hole mess in two points. Their entry suggests a possible genetic alteration on their structure despite the hypothesis that they are genetailored.

One could theorise that the sectoids were somekind of species of their own till the etherials came around and medled with them turning them into their current form.

Or they simply grew them up completely artificially and modified them further ahead.

However in both cases there seems to be an ulterior sectoid motive to fix the sterility of their species and that seems to be their drive not their loyalty to the etherials. My case in point been the aquatoids: They are the same race only a few hundred millions of years old and they still try to do the same thing (this time without outside interference). And they also go around naked as well depsite this time been the headhonchos. The Etherials seem to tolerate this antic, because it provides them with infliltrators (as can been discearned in the alien infiltration mission).

Thus in general I belive that the sectoids are complete throw aways, especially since it seems that they are the most intelligent of servient species. I would even go as far to say that they are second in command. I belive that their nakedeness is just a throwback to their stereotypical sci-fi image.

One other point I dont agree, is the main empire thing: As far as I understand it, currently the strike force that is on Mars, has no contact with the rest of the empire. It is a self contained operation capable of manufacturing war material (soldiers and otherwise) and waging its operations on its own. Further more the whole operation, is clearly evident that its not meant to wipeout (at least completely) mankind and it has been on for many many many years. I personally belive that Mars is the observation center of what I call the earth experiment (and it is basically admited so by the brain itself). An attempt to create a control planet and guide its evolution through certain steps, one of the intermidiate steps been taking over, perhaps because man got out of hand science wise. Thus the brain is the director of the operations here, the rest of the empire has no contact (or its very limited due to star travel? who knows why) or ability to intervine curretly since there would be massive retaliation in the intervening 60 years if you take interceptor as cannon or 90 if you ignore it and go to apocalypse streight. Even if you do ignore interceptor though, mankind has already started establishing colonies out there on etherial turf and if they considered that the time to end mankinds scientific development was then (1998), I can only guess at what they would want to do now (in 2060 or 2090) that their pet experiment is colonising their possesions and steadily pushes them back.

That's an interesting post, Arthanor. I would like to add that while the aliens as a whole indeed have so much more resources available to them - in terms of energy, population and technology - the ones fighting on Earth do not have reliable supply routes and actually are quite short on materials and people. They perhaps mine Mars to a certain degree and must have industrial facilities that are wonderfully efficient, but it's all small scale; Cydonia is a military base, not an industrial centre. That's why their modus operandi is to use whatever is available, like bio-engineered Earth organisms, Sectoids that are easy to clone using Earth biomass, as well as services of human traitors. Their plan is to conquer the planet using human governments, not their own armies, because there's not enough of them. (Though I suppose they could just fusion bomb us, but genocide is clearly not their objective.)

It is stated though, that the alien hordes are in such a number that it is impossible to win in a conventional war even with x-com reverse engineering everything.

Wow, that ended up been a whole thesis....

[Vesparco]

Trying to mash up the feedback so far I've been experimenting with cybernetic enhancement (even a smartlink from Shadowrun) and stuff alike. I feel the results achieve are not very convincing.

The reduced size of the sprite leave very small window for details without blurring the whole and also I have the feeling it is not very "vainilla" style.

About the alien armours, I was noticing now that the alien enhancement is always from the inside ( I believe mostly to hide the weakness until autopsies). This would explain why the sectoids are naked and feeble as their anatomy seems unable to sustain the trauma surgery as the muton/floater and the others.

Then about the escalating discussion about the greater plot of the x-com: I want to see how continues XD

[Solarius Scorch]

The reduced size of the sprite leave very small window for details without blurring the whole and also I have the feeling it is not very "vainilla" style.

Nah, I think it looks pretty good so far.

About the alien armours, I was noticing now that the alien enhancement is always from the inside ( I believe mostly to hide the weakness until autopsies). This would explain why the sectoids are naked and feeble as their anatomy seems unable to sustain the trauma surgery as the muton/floater and the others.

Which doesn't stop them from being way more resistant to bullets than humans.

Then about the escalating discussion about the greater plot of the x-com: I want to see how continues XD

For now I would like to add that it's not really important if they have a connection to the empire or not; I still think their operation a small scale one, though self-supporting. I think the "aliens are way more numerous than us" message is more about the fact that they can remain safe from Earth armies while being able to strike anywhere, and therefore can never lose.

[pilot00]

For now I would like to add that it's not really important if they have a connection to the empire or not; I still think their operation a small scale one, though self-supporting. I think the "aliens are way more numerous than us" message is more about the fact that they can remain safe from Earth armies while being able to strike anywhere, and therefore can never lose.

To me it means that they are capable of pooting inumerable boots on the ground via cloning. Not that soldiers are what is going to win the war anyway. One can theorise that a single battleship per continent is capable of laying it to waste vs vanilla earth tech and assuming they have no nuclear deterence. And even if they dont have the nukes would do more damage to earth and its nations rather than the aliens.

[Dioxine]

I'd try more drastic shade differences on that sprite - the idea is very good, I love the cyborgizations, the problem is - it's too flat imo, and hence the detail blurs on the tactical map.

As for the discussion... well, this turns my mind to the "darker side of XCom". The obvious implication of the game is, that the X-COM shares its technological secrets very reluctantly, if at all. One could argue that even without the Elerium, the technologies based on alien tech would allow the Earth military to strike back at some point, or at least make Earth's airspace impregnable to UFOs - when said technologies are deployed in sufficient number. Even more important would be purely industrial technologies - alloy shaping alone, when industrialized, would increase Earth's industrial potential manyfold, especially coupled with energy transmission and data processing upgrades (limitless energy from the sun might no longer be a pipe dream, and what about the fusion energy - man we have temperature-room superconductors now! This means almost no limit on electromagnet power...)

The XCom seems to be keeping a tight lid on these technologies, only selling them in small numbers, though. I think reasons are twofold:

1. If Earth was starting to gain a real fighting potential, it would become much less scared of terrorist attacks, and such a development would undermine the Alien position in diplomatic negotiations. People who are not scared won't be selling out as quickly, if at all. Such a state of affairs might force Alien hand to deploy strategic weapons - weapons of mass destruction, that is. The (I think) major reason of not deploying them - avoiding pushing Earth's elites into a  fight to the death mindset - would not exist anymore, since they're already challenging the Aliens.
So in short, XCom wants to avoid the risk of wholesale genocide, should early Earth defense systems fail to intercept alien WMDs (and XCom knows nothing about the capabilities of these WMDs, so the risk is great).

2. And there is the "darker side". XCom is bound to have a coterie of sponsors - military, political and financial leaders who threw their lot with supporting the project. These men aren't charity. They also know that with a small fleet of Avengers and a host of alien tech (psionics!) they can control the Earth just as easily as the Aliens. So: get rid of the competition, start world domination (possibly with the US President as a frontman in this new world order). The events of TFTD seem to indicate that the plan succeeded, if only to a point: nation states are mostly gone, but the Earth is still divided into several competing blocs. More importantly, humans in TFTD have an access to very high technology, while their cities remind of run-down Detroit. A sure sign that the technology is elitist and there is a close-knit group in control. If the technology was industrialized and popularized, the cities would look very, very different.
In a nutshell: this is another reason to keep the tech hush-hush.

Keeping these in mind, there is semi-canon MiB organization, and the financial, political and military leaders who support it. And their objectives are clear as well: Earth is lost, what we need is a diplomatic solution. Plus, just like in point 2. of the previous group - elite-only tech, control of the Earth, if under Alien souveregnity. Aliens surely must not be idiots, they'd leave governing humans to other humans - humans like MJ12/MiB.

This leads us to an interesting idea. XCom should be not only fighting MiB - there is an obvious clash, casus beli between these two groups - but also intelligence services of the countries that do not want either scenario to play out. Countries who are underdogs and would like to industrialize the alien tech - either due to their strategical interests, or even partially due to their ideals - nation-states cannot survive without some sort of pro-social ideas, and the society would certainly want limitless electricity, cheap cars, better healthcare and kicing alien butts.
So the XCom would often, IMO, be involved in clashes with intelligence services of countries like Russia, China, India, Brazil, Germany, maybe even UK, looking to grab alien tech, nationalize it, mass-produce it and use to turn their nation-state into a superpower (and fight the aliens directly, too).

[Arthanor]

Very interesting take on the sneaky "we want the aliens to think we're weak and willing to sign pacts so they don't destroy us, so we have to keep the main governments weak then we strike at their brain and hopefully win" strategy. I never really considered that..

XCom selling out to certain powers and how it changed the face of the Earth in TftD is a consequence I had not thought about either. I tend to consider XCom more of an optimistic setting (all the nations of the world funding an initiative together to put together their resources and save the world) than a dark one but if you dig enough there is some dark spots indeed.

Makes me rethink some of what I did in the XAE. Currently, I have manufacturing projects that represent XCom going to build base defence equivalent in some countries for profit (I find that better than churning out laser cannons..).

The next step I was considering a series of research projects to represent alloy/laser/gauss commercialization. It would give you a large amount of points (all the funding nations are happy that you released new tech they can use to fight the aliens) and also allow purchasing commercial version of alloy/laser/gauss weapons. That would keep the "shop" relevant in the end game and make logistics a bit easier: You don't have to produce personal armor and laser rifle for your radar base guards, you can simply buy it for a little bit more.

But that's a much more open take on technology than what seems to fit with the storyline followed in EU -> TftD..

[pilot00]

Can I have a source on the semi-cannon MIB? I have read a lot of source matterial but never run into something concearning them.

Also the reason IMHO X-com doesnt hand out its tech and make the rest of the world participate into the war is not as complex and convulted as it seems. The whole reason is practicality.

There is not enough time to begin mass producing experimental (and yes everything x-com is producing is experimental look at the damn power suits) weapons craft and computer systems on such a scale as to equip a nation let alone an entire planet. Reverse engineering works because it is localised and on a small scale. And lets not discuss about the matterials (basically forget alloys just elerium) needed to operate and manufacture what is needed to equip armies of this scale. The alliens however limited their operations are, are capable of this. Bringing the entire planet or even just the most powerfull nations of the planet into the conflict and the resources need to 'tech them up' would require years. Years earth doesnt have, remember that the aliens are capable of pushing the 'kill switch' so to speak at any moment. The fact that you get only one attack at Cydonia or its over is an indication of this. The whole 'war' is fought on the premise that the aliens have an unknown purpose, and start linient towards X-com considering a nuisance. They get increasingly fed up with X-com messing up with their operations and when X-com finally retaliates on Mars, they either succeed or the alies had enough and well....piratez for you.

X-com didnt hoard the tech also. In fact if you read the lore, X-com acutally sold the tech to the council nations (and this was a clause in the Geneva contract) and only under desperate situations to third groups durring the war. Plus all tech and matterial came under council juristiction and handling after the end of the war, which forced X-Com to evolve into a corporation and most of its matterial and scientists handed over to new found Marsec.

And there is the "darker side". XCom is bound to have a coterie of sponsors - military, political and financial leaders who threw their lot with supporting the project. These men aren't charity. They also know that with a small fleet of Avengers and a host of alien tech (psionics!) they can control the Earth just as easily as the Aliens. So: get rid of the competition, start world domination (possibly with the US President as a frontman in this new world order). The events of TFTD seem to indicate that the plan succeeded, if only to a point: nation states are mostly gone, but the Earth is still divided into several competing blocs. More importantly, humans in TFTD have an access to very high technology, while their cities remind of run-down Detroit. A sure sign that the technology is elitist and there is a close-knit group in control. If the technology was industrialized and popularized, the cities would look very, very different.
In a nutshell: this is another reason to keep the tech hush-hush.

Actually this didnt happen under any sort of shadow plans. This is done explicitely because most of alien tech was innoperalbe due to cost efficiency (elerium was inaccessible and only what x-com had was available till a few before the second invasion and the Martian elerium case was uncovered) and simply put it was not the Amalthian horn they hoped. They made a huge leap yes, but not enough to revitalise a dying (as it is portreid in the lore) civilisation. The earth contiuned to strugle with its wars, pollution, failed politians and huge populations and most states failed due to their innability to fix their problems, leading to the mess of TFFD and the eventual salvation of mankind by firing up space exploration again, because they were capable of building Zrbite casing space engines.

[Dioxine]

Excuse me but what X-Com can manufacture under harsh secret base conditions, nation states could do much, much easier actually if the whole thing is fully disclosed... More industrial potential is more industrial potential, period. The main problem I describe is basically this: you say that "teching up" earth armies would take years... Yes indeed... The real problem would be if XCom council allowed them to tech themselves up, without X-Coms supervision Take the 2nd world war and how quickly the warring powers were able to go from drawing board to mass production... Of course there is always the danger of the "kill switch" and this is the rationale behind XCom. A rationale that can even justify tyranny, really

Now to take some of your points head-on...

a) Reverse engineering works because it's on small scale.
- Really? You need to reverse-engineer only once, then prepare the tech for mass production (let a bunch of US or Russian engineers at it, they will do it quickly and efficiently). Hand-made goods might be of better quality but lack standarization and are wasteful & expensive.
b) Lore says X-Com is proliferating alien tech freely
- Regardless of out-of-game lore, I consider in-game facts to take precedence. We don't see non-Xcom human-made laser-totting craft engaging UFOs in game. This can be justified by game's simlicity, but... se below
c) Earth got dragged down by "incidental and natural inability of humans to solve their problems".
- Oh yeah, if there indeed was a shadow council keeping the lid on the tech, they'd make sure humans were endlessly fighting against each other. Humans are generally able to prosper when left alone, thank you very much. But struggling and divided people don't start revolutions. If the tech was really shared, lack of elerium nothwithstanding, it's simply too wondrous to justify the lack of a new industrial revolution-type event, when polpulations became, in comparison, basically filthy-rich within the span of a couple generations... Unless somebody made sure no technological revolution took place. It was impossible in XIXth century (despite some tries), but it IS possible with Alien-grade technology. Especially if it didn't leak too much.
d) Post TFTD salvation of mankind
- Some salvation there, if the Earth basically got destroyed... A single city, a single damned city was all that was left standing by the time of Apocalypse (plus, possibly quite numerous, space colonies, but I'd place the total humanity population count at maybe 100-200 million). Indeed, a salvation for a few, but the cost was beyond terrifying...

[pilot00]

Excuse me but what X-Com can manufacture under harsh secret base conditions, nation states could do much, much easier actually if the whole thing is fully disclosed... More industrial potential is more industrial potential, period. The main problem I describe is basically this: you say that "teching up" earth armies would take years... Yes indeed... The real problem would be if XCom council allowed them to tech themselves up, without X-Coms supervision Take the 2nd world war and how quickly the warring powers were able to go from drawing board to mass production... Of course there is always the danger of the "kill switch" and this is the rationale behind XCom. A rationale that can even justify tyranny, really

There is one point to manufacture x equipment that requires specialised resources in a matter of months and there is another point of manufacturing advanced equipment requiring special matterials and resources (and not only alien) in assembly lines of mass propositions to equip an entire planet.

Some basic: problems

a)Procurement of said specialised matterial. You need to establish a whole supply and logistics chain to ship said specialised matterials across the globe. All the while you have to convince the planet to participate. Good luck in that. And even if they put the greater good ahead of everything (dont expect anyone to enter into tottal war state) it will be an enormus time consuming thing just to be made on paper. And if it is been made good luck defending it from from a superior in everything foe.
b)Availability of said matterial. I am certain the world doesnt have lazer lences or plasma accelators been manufactured by the dozens. This adds an enormus time consuming time table to establish production zones which will eventually lead to the problems of a).

This things by themselves are going to push the time frame beyond 2002 even by the most optimistic layouts.

WW2 was based on an already established industrial base with little modifications. All the countries who were not ready or were unable to addapt their industry to tottal war requirements failed. See at Japan for an example. It was an event that was in the prosses of plans and designes and war matterial manufacturing for at least 5 years, either by the aggressors who planed it or the other countries who uped their own production just to be on the safe side. The soviets were the only example to come on top without a heavy industrial base (at the start), but that was due to the rest of the allies supplying them till they got their own industrial base up and running. Plus comparison is mute: WW2 tech didnt require special matterials found nowhere. Except the atomic bombs. But those were more like statement weapons that sped things up rather a weapon that saw mass deployment.

X-Com circumevents this problems by its very existence. Its a small state of the art operation that was designed and prepared before the actuall hostilities escalated. The production capabilities of earth are capable as is without further logistical strain to procure whatever specialised equipment X-Com needs because x-com manufactures in limited scale. And shipping can remain hidden for the same reasons. Plus X-com does have the capability (limited at first) to steal whatever alien matterial it needs for its own purposes. I can see having pilfered enough elerium to equip with weapons and armor for 50 - 100 soldiers been feasably by employing shadow ops, but how exactly are you going to loot enough UFOs to equip millions once it becomes clear the planet unified against the aliens? 

The only way the rest of the world could do this was with something like this: Start the process of massive industrialisation and shipping internationally years (decades?) before X-com was drafted and continuing the process while been in real time contact with x-com and addapting where nessecery, up to the point where it would be ready, absorb x-com and start a mass landing on Mars. Lore suggests humanity knew about the aliens so this could be possible, but the lore suggests this didnt happen. Or start immediately with X-com. But that would alert the aliens. So kill switch.

a) Reverse engineering works because it's on small scale.
- Really? You need to reverse-engineer only once, then prepare the tech for mass production (let a bunch of US or Russian engineers at it, they will do it quickly and efficiently). Hand-made goods might be of better quality but lack standarization and are wasteful & expensive.

I may not have explained it right in the first place, but what I meant is not the process itself but the needs to manufacture and equip millions of boots. See my previous reply. I also I doubt its enough to show the shematics to some engineers and they will be able to automatically build something they cant understand. X-com engineers are working in conjuction with the labs and we can assume that when something is been designed in the labs in the research time, the engineers are included on how to.

b) Lore says X-Com is proliferating alien tech freely
- Regardless of out-of-game lore, I consider in-game facts to take precedence. We don't see non-Xcom human-made laser-totting craft engaging UFOs in game. This can be justified by game's simlicity, but... se below

In game mechanics are not lore m8 and should not be taken as such. If we do that then the world of X-com despite the fact that it has aliens and psionics would make no sense at all. Do you consider lore that there is not a single militia or police force present? Do you consider lore that in every terror site the civilians are dumb? Do you consider lore that every attack on large populated cities are just two- three blocks with only 3 storie buildings?

c) Earth got dragged down by "incidental and natural inability of humans to solve their problems".
- Oh yeah, if there indeed was a shadow council keeping the lid on the tech, they'd make sure humans were endlessly fighting against each other. Humans are generally able to prosper when left alone, thank you very much. But struggling and divided people don't start revolutions. If the tech was really shared, lack of elerium nothwithstanding, it's simply too wondrous to justify the lack of a new industrial revolution-type event, when polpulations became, in comparison, basically filthy-rich within the span of a couple generations... Unless somebody made sure no technological revolution took place. It was impossible in XIXth century (despite some tries), but it IS possible with Alien-grade technology. Especially if it didn't leak too much.

Struggling and devided people dont start revolutions? Were all of earths revolutions started by the rich and powerfull then? I think I dont understand something here, because most of the revolutions I know of were of filthy poor people trying to survive. The tech revolution as you describe it happened, but not on the time frame between 1999 and 2046. I dont remember the dates exactly but it was after the war with Tleth ended. Solemine build the first reactor capable of making to the asteroid belt in a matter of days using an Zrbite cashing. From there on they harvested resources completely tapped the Elerium left on Mars and eventually started mining elerium itself building extrasolar colonies. Up to this point even basic space exploration was abandoned. After 2002 the technology of the aliens was simply impractical and impossible to replicate due the fact that elerium was impossible both to replicate and find. What good is gonna do tech thats impossible to replicate? And I am not talking about the basic stuff, such as durable alloys, that was made (gauss tech) I am talking about the advanced stuff like power sources, plasma large scale anti gravity etc. Whatever requires elerium.
[/quote]

d) Post TFTD salvation of mankind
- Some salvation there, if the Earth basically got destroyed... A single city, a single damned city was all that was left standing by the time of Apocalypse (plus, possibly quite numerous, space colonies, but I'd place the total humanity population count at maybe 100-200 million). Indeed, a salvation for a few, but the cost was beyond terrifying...

Not possibly, quite numerous colonies indeed and ever expanding frontier. Regardless of how you put it, yes it was salvation. Elerium finally got found so limitless energy. The planet got banged up true (but that was kinda innevitable, at least the got a possitive which let them to move on instead of die on the spot), but colonising other planets means that mankind spreads and its not dependant on a single world for its survival. Alien tech gets replicated, psionics become a norm and....the rest we will never know.2096 and Mega Primus are actually the technological revolution you were speaking off m8. I dont say I like it, but thats how it is. The manual of Apocalypse has a letter from the Senate which calls Mega Primus Utopia and the future of mankind, so they kinda feel that way. I wouldnt put the pop count so low as well. But my arguements from it would come from interceptor and I dont know how much of it (if any at all is cannon).

Thank you for this, I wanted to discuss all this for many many years and hear other opinions too