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[Rince Wind]

The mothership is probably in the Mariana Trench. As a safeguard if something goes wrong... They are preparing the sectoids for a life aquatic, looking for new allies down there building subs, stuff like that.
And when they get news that their landlubber cousins failed (again) they will attack the Hyperion. And kidnapp people, terrorise islands (only sunny ones with fat tourists and dark skinned natives), the usual.

[GiglameshDespair]

The mothership is probably in the Mariana Trench. As a safeguard if something goes wrong... They are preparing the sectoids for a life aquatic, looking for new allies down there building subs, stuff like that.
And when they get news that their landlubber cousins failed (again) they will attack the Hyperion. And kidnapp people, terrorise islands (only sunny ones with fat tourists and dark skinned natives), the usual.

This is after the landlubber aliens have enacted their dastardly plot to build Easter Island head knock-offs in every tropical tourist location, of course.

[My Name is Immaterial]

My bet hope is that they landed the mothership in their capital city, so we can infiltrate it and steal it.

[TempAcc]

Interesting. I've never actualy played UFO: Aftermath or its sequels. The negative reviews and the whole real time combat thing have kind of kept me away from it. I'm considering trying it now that I got bored with xenonauts, buuuuuuuut, bluh.

[Shadowlord]

And when they get news that their landlubber cousins failed (again) they will attack the Hyperion.

The Hyperion?

[GiglameshDespair]

Interesting. I've never actualy played UFO: Aftermath or its sequels. The negative reviews and the whole real time combat thing have kind of kept me away from it. I'm considering trying it now that I got bored with xenonauts, buuuuuuuut, bluh.

Don't play it expecting X-Com. I think that was a big problem it had... people saw it, thought "Oh! A x-com like! Neat!" and then were disappointed that it really isn't.

The combat is pausable real-time. Air combat is just settled by a single roll, though it shows you a cool cinematic as it does. The territory system is different, and you can leave missions to other forces rather than your squad (their success chances being influenced by how well you're doing, research, mission, etc). There's no finances, and no council or anything like that. Bases are somethign you capture, rather than build, and you allocate a use to a base, rather than build modules for it.

[Rolan7]

Yeah it's definitely not XCOM.  If you want that, play UFO: Extraterrestrials (or Xenonauts maybe, I haven't tried that).  UFO:ET is turn-based, and essentially OldCOM with a bunch of ease-of-use upgrades and a longer tech tree.  Like, if you consider moving a soldier to a square, the game will highlight enemies the soldier will be able to see.  Negating some of the absolute BS LOS issues OldCOM had.

Aftermath doesn't have base-building (though the two sequels do).  And it's entirely real-time-with-copious-pausing.  You capture more bases and set their roles, but you don't place modules.

One particularly nice thing is, you don't have to grind on lower-tier aliens.  The world is covered in terran species mutated by... something.  They're the main threat.  Like XCOM 2, the actual aliens are terrifying and powerful.
Especially, yes, once they start spamming their bio-rockets.  But I mostly countered that with the ability to hide behind corners, popping out to ambush.  Even the basic scrounged shotguns are devastating with a proper ambush.  And losses are... expected.  Despite the interesting training system.

[RAM]

My bet hope is that they landed the mothership in their capital city, so we can infiltrate it and steal it.

Perhaps F.T.L. travel messes up your vessel and it is cheaper to just build a new one. Perhaps they landed, took out al the furniture, and moved in next door to the Clampets and the Adamses. Meanwhile they just left a massive, vaguely-mobile transport ship lying around where any old band of rag-tag human revolutionaries could find it...

[Flying Dice]

Rolan: In reference to your main point: Where's the proof? I could just as easily claim that nuCOM2's invasion went as it did because in that universe the Uber Ethereal decided to take a more hands-on approach. Or, alternatively, the faction that invaded Earth wasn't the same one as in nuCOM. Both of those make just as much sense as "Oh, XCOM just sucked," mixed with "Because Impossible" meta.

I myself just like to think that they wanted to test humans at first, but at around halfway through or some other key point in XCOM's plot, started realizing that it wasn't such a great idea after all, but couldn't mobilize enough of their forces in time.

Because it feels rather disappointing to know that you only won because they let you.

A bit late here, but the point is that they didn't. They miscalculated how quickly humanity would advance and how effectively it could bootstrap up through their technology. That ending is the UE saying, in flowery language, "We dun goofed, and how the hell do you morons expect to get anywhere without our help?"

[Rolan7]

I'm not really trying to prove anything, just questioning the common interpretation:  That the aliens were toying with us.  Which sounds, to me, like an odd stretch.  I still don't see much about the game that actually suggests that the aliens were toying with us.  Even the UE doesn't say that, the quote you provided was directed at their slave species in general.  Yet people seem to read it as "The UE was specifically trying to uplift and prepare humanity - *through combat*"

But that quote from Jake Solomon is rather convincing to me: “To say Impossible Iron Man is canon is perfect. We think that’s basically the experience that XCOM had.”

It's not an alternate universe where the Ethereals tried a totally different tactic.  The developers have always said that XCOM2 is what happened if XCOM failed in the first game.  As most players did.  In Impossible Ironman, unless the player is very experienced, XCOM gets crushed and shut down.

The simplest explanation is that the aliens want to win.  To suggest otherwise is what requires evidence.

The villain only offers the Volunteer a deal at gunpoint.

[GiglameshDespair]

"Toying!" also has very different connotations from "testing", which is what we tend to be using. All the relevant stuff has been mentioned att this point, so anything more is going in circles.  Evidence has been presented.Comments from shen; direct from the alien commander; the game itself.

[Rolan7]

Which is ridiculous.  Shen was guessing at motivations of aliens he *just* met.  And the Uber Ethereal says nothing about preparing or uplifting humanity - he's talking about the failed species.

[GiglameshDespair]

Again, it's been mentioned earlier the Ethereals could have destroyed humanity without much issue if they had wished. That's not something you'd need to study them too in depth to work out.

If you lose soldiers on the final mission the Uber literally talks about how he's wondering if humanity wasa worthy selection, and how the soldiers aren't "passing"

“   The New One's kin falls, and our fear grows, as we question the worthiness of our selection…   ”
“   Weakness… we did not expect this … weakness… another of the new breed fails to pass…   ”
“   Were we… mistaken… Could this be another failure in the face of such promise? How can the New Ones pack fall to these… lesser beings…   ”

He's literally saying humanity is selected, and failing to pass the test there. That if your soldiers die, they're failing a test.

But really, man. Everything Uber talks about how they were searching, uplifting species, and now they found one. That's before he's even worried you might win.

[Rolan7]

@GilgameshDespair
Ah okay, those are better quotes.  I didn't mean to argue that humanity wasn't selected (the aliens are on earth, abducting humans, after all) but just that that previous quote about "preparing" and "uplift" wasn't referring to humanity.

And actually, as a compromise, they do seem fascinated by the volunteer.  Maybe their *original* plan was just to conquer and experiment as I've been saying.  Again, based on what they do in XCOM 2 (or in XCOM 1 if you aren't skilled).  *But* then they saw the volunteer use the Gollop chamber, and decided to skip a bunch of effort by negotiating.

...  And were just absurdly stupid enough to allow the Volunteer on the temple ship and expect that to work out for them.  Or maybe they expected to be able to mind control the volunteer, who knows.  There's probably some hubris involved, even though at that point XCOM controls the skies and the battlefields effortlessly.

I just don't accept that they were training XCOM from the start, and I've explained why.  Some villain appearing and saying "It was all our plan, now join us!" just doesn't convince me otherwise, particularly when said villain got gunned down without hesitation.  It's either an incredibly dumb plan, or a bluff.  And since they apparently win if they're able, I say it's a bluff.

They had their own uberpowerful human psi slaves!  They didn't need XCOM for anything.

[KingofstarrySkies]

Maybe that will be the major plot point of nucom 2 :v

Aliums go "naaaaah we failed again lets turn them into slaves and go away searching for more hookers and blow", humanity turns around and  ends up ascending by itself, aliums notice, come back to check on things, and get collectively stabbed by the newfangled humanity.

Exactly!  It'd prove me wrong, but I could totally see that happening.

I now really want the final battle to be aboard the mothership up in space.