Conspiracy Theory Feedback...

[Pete]

Following on from Accounting Troll's excellent Conspiracy Theory in the second "Creating Aftershock" newsletter sent out today, we'd like your opinions on what you think is really going on behind the scenes in the UFO Universe.

 

Don't worry if you're not subscribed to the newsletter - you'll get a chance to see Accounting Troll's article this Sunday when the newsletter is posted up on our site. Please come back then and join in with the theories... there's a LOT to unravel!

[Accounting Troll]

Incidentally, Altair have just released some information on the cultists in their introduction to the factions that can be found here. The cultists have been cast in a similar role to the Cult of Sirius in X-Com - they worship the aliens and are idealogically opposed to your efforts.

 

They think that a higher power is going to turn up to finish the Reticulan experiments. Could this be a hint that the Reticulans were only ever hired hands? If so, could this higher power be sponsoring the cult?

 

Doomsday cults don't normally manage to get so large and organised on a global scale. You would also expect to see lots of small cults that go around perverting scraps of the local religion unless they had a lot of help. In the USA, the cultists would think they were living in the time of the Christian acopalypse and India they would be a resurgent form of the thuggee cult (a cult who worshipped the Hindu goddess of death and practiced ritualised murder. The British Empire came close to stamping them out, but occasional thuggee murders still happen today).

[Nutguy]

First of all let me say congrats on a very fine article. One that I enjoyed reading!

 

Now on to dissecting it!

 

Bionode material: It doesn't have to be that the bionode "applicants" had to volunteer. They could be dissidents, convicts or even low ranking soldiers, ordered to die for the common good, not having another choice. Also given the fact that, in-game, the entire earth surface could be covered by a few dozen bionodes (even with multiple coverage, to make the grid more "dense") the following question comes to mind. How many Reticulans are requiered to make a bionode? If one (or any single digit number) is enough then, the number of "volunteers" would be rather small. If on the other hand, dozens were requiered for a sngle bionode then we have another issue to think of. Eventually who 'd be left to carry out the menial tasks of everyday operations? (kick United Council's a$$ etc). The only reasonable explanation to this scenario is the presence of overwhelming numbers of Reticulans which isn't justified by what our soliers were seeing on the battlefield on our first contact with them in the beginning days and months.

 

Octupuses: Just one question. Where on earth do we know their weight? As far as I recall (and admittedly it's been some time since I played the game) you meet them in the lunar mission, kill them, victory message follows (in which there is no mention about them I think), victory video, THE END! So please informed this uninformed disciple of your theory ( ) as to your source of octupus information. (Hint: Maybe Accounting Troll is a part of this conspiracy and that's why he knows all this stuff!!! ).

 

Military technology: A perfectly good explanation here... It's called the "developers excuse for not making the game extremely difficult, so that no-one will buy it" :mad: . Back to our fictional universe though, it may simply be that they underestimated our resolve and our capabilities and decided not to bring forth the big guns from the beginning. And as far as the collapsible plasma turret is concerned, an explanation is given by our scientists in-game. "They were impressed by our weaponry and immitated it" (Yeah, ok I know lame-ass excuse, by some superiority complex science geeks who'd like to think of themselves as gods and of our race as superior, but still ). Now, Warp technology. Our own understanding of the warp principles is limited. Maybe the application of warp technology could not be made to work on anything larger than a weapon. Power and volume limitations may apply even to the Reticulans, thus making space travel not feasible via warp.

 

Ok, that's all I could dissect. The rest of the article presents some serious questions indeed that we only hope will be answered in Aftershock! I for one can't wait grabbing my favourite rifle back and wasting some Reti's

[Pete]

Hehe, I know the data from the Octopus transgenants will be in the game's data tables (where all the info for each alien, item or weapon is stored) so that explains that one

[Thorondor]

@Nutguy:

 

"Back to our fictional universe though, it may simply be that they underestimated our resolve and our capabilities and decided not to bring forth the big guns from the beginning."

 

It's not so much that they underestimated us, it's more like they hardly even thought us relevant. Talk about an ego trip...

 

::

 

Inquisitive minds want to know, right ? - here's a link to a July 2002 post by ALTAR addressing just this very issue.

[Accounting Troll]

Glad you liked the article Nutguy. Personally, I'll be interested to find out how close or wide of the mark it is when Aftershock comes out.

 

Regarding the octopuses: as you said, you don't get the chance to research them, so I had to do some digging around in the game files to get most of the data on them. It is possible for a soldier to pick up an octopus (but he will be seriously overloaded), so if you do that and then go into the equipment screen, you can work out how much it weighs.

 

The bionode question is a bit of a puzzler. The Reticulans must be pretty overstretched when humanity starts fighting back, so they can't spare many personnel to become bionodes. Hopefully Altair will reveal all.

 

Regarding the alien weapons, I can see what you're saying about the aliens underestimating us. Perhaps the more powerful weapons are harder for them to produce, so they thought they would try to get away with equipping their soldiers with the basic weapons. By the late game, they realise that they've SERIOUSLY messed up, which leads to them copying our technology and making their power sharing offer.

 

Thorondor, don't forget that in the final mission, you have to destroy certain objects before the door to the queens chamber will open. Those objects look like some kind of alien incubators to me, although I've no idea how long it takes a Reticulan baby to reach adulthood.

 

I might address what the Reticulans really thought of us in a seperate conspiracy theory one day...

[Kriptor]

They think that a higher power is going to turn up to finish the Reticulan experiments.  Could this be a hint that the Reticulans were only ever hired hands?  If so, could this higher power be sponsoring the cult?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Look at these screenshots:

screenshot 1

screenshot 2

The reticulans have the same biotechnology in 2050 as in 2005. I think these chambers aren't reticulan facilities.

[Pete]

You may very well be onto something there. Any more screenshots like that? ALTAR may have been hinting at something much larger for a while perhaps?

[Stefan100]

I think the first screenshot looks like an teleport (maybe cyborg tech?), and the second seems to be an altar.

[Accounting Troll]

Those symbols look rather like the old Viking runic alphabet The mystery deepens.

[Kriptor]

Any more screenshots like that?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There aren't more interesting screenshots

[Stefan100]

Before this topic dies I wanna add something. I found this artwotk-screenshot, and it has the same symbols as in the other two. Those "strange" screenshots does maybe just show some kind of human base...