I don't get it; how is this *slightly tweaked* storyline of yours any better than the "official" one?!
You're only making minor changes to the initial wording (i.e. " [...] and subsequent years " -- isn't it obvious that a *historic/background* timeline will cover a stream of events from some past moment in time to the "present time" of the epic?!), or adding complexity without any insight or depth (i.e. " [...] not a virus, but a genetically programmed biological nano-bot " -- I'm not even sure what all that pseudo-techno babble was supposed to mean, or what are the implied differences from the "original description" of XVI), thus only confusing the reader and shattering the "suspension of disbelief".
By the way, why are you doing this? As I remember, there was a post from the authors, some good time ago, which clearly stated that no more suggestions/alterations will be accepted to the current storyline, as it is final (own views on this issue notwithstanding). So why bother at all?!
P.S. Should you choose to continue this endeavour, to whatever end and for whatever reasons, let me give you a bit of (free) advice: do use a spelling checker, OK? (e.g. it's 'their', not 'theyr'; 'genome', not 'genoma' etc. etc. )
-It's not better, it is the same with some more details.
- About "subsequent yrs": you didn't get the point i was aiming at, but it wasn't obvious. If you write "Roughly 1,000,000" it means that you can't give events with a much detailed time resolution. So it is a formal mistake to give events "roughly 1,000,000 -> R. 999,999". "Subsequent" was referred to the fact i have merged the first steps of storyline in a single step of less-than-thousand years.
-Pseudo-techno babble? First of all, it's not pseudo-techno but in part is reality. And when the alternative explaination is "psionics", which means nothing but is part of "sci-fi culture" i think you can't say my idea is "babble".
-I have read that post about altering the storyline. If i remember correctly it was in response to more radical changes. I repeat, i not going to change anything, just strenghten the structure. And if devs don't like it, they just leave it and no offense is made.
There is a far more simpler point.
The timeline of things that happened before the game starts, does not need to be edited or explained any better than what Winter has. There absolutely no point
Why? - The player will never know. It exists simply as an unseen foundation for the storyline in the game, and is perfectably capable of doing so provided it makes sense. Winter could have wrote "The spacefaring Tamarians found/made a mind controlling parasite and infected themselves, which caused them to find and then to infect the Ortnoks, now they both are going to try to infect earth".
This is not a book, this is a game. The player has a limited perspective of whats going on storywise, and its that perspective you should aim to polish.
If you going to use words like "genetically programmed biological nano-bot", have the decency to do some basic research - thus realising what you're talking about was essentially genetically engineered bacteria and viri - which has not been science fiction in a long time.
-About the "player-centric" viewpoint i don't agree except at a superficial level. Ok, you just give some sense somehow, such as there is notihing more than the player sees. Fair enough, it works. What do you get? Since the aliens are put there just to entratain the player, they entratain the player. Terror mission, terror mission, perhaps some other missions, they get tchnology stolen and get destroyed.
Don't XVI have a "B plan"? All he does is to try infecting? Nothing more, such as weaken the enemy before exposing? Don't XVI, while humans study him, try to study human weakenesses
beyond adapting the virus to the human race?
http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=5084.0And as greever said, perhaps in the next century there will be an alien campaign.
See, it's not for the player entretainment to build a solid and deep storyline beyond the player capability to know it. It's about design. If you have a strong backbone story you can introduce more interesting features. What about give more paths to victory? One researching the FTL drive, the other understanding XVI "psionic" abilities. It would be interesting, but you can't do it in a convicning level if you think only about "player". And what about having more paths to lose? XVI may have different plans and surely if he will ever know humans may counteratack, he may try to destroy humans instead of giving them the chance to destroy him.
- The decency to do basic research, i see. Do you think i didn't know nano-bots are actually enginered bacteria and viri?
"genetically programmed biological nano-bot, created
engineriing a virus or bacteria wich replicates using raw biological materials introduced with food. "
So i knew about this, have the "decency" to read carefully (i know my writing style in english is painful to read). Why then i made this modification? Well, once a virus is re-programmed to serve, i don't think is a virus anymore but a nano-bot. And, I eliminated the replacement mechanism similar to the one of virus which weakens the host attacking his cells (would be a conter-productive plan). This is the difference.
It's not much advanced the idea of nanobots, as you pointed, but the idea of organizational capability both short (inside body) and long range (what magical interaction could be responsible for signal transmission regardless of medium? gravitational?).
Now the polemical part. When "psionic" capability was used do you think somebody made a research on parapsichology journals? I don't think so, the idea of distributed intelligence is in our "sci-fi culture" from "Nemesis" written by Asimov and perhaps before (but i don't know). Also do you think that FTL wormholes were called after studying formally the General Relativity? I don't think so. The concept of "wormholes" and "curvature of space and time" are also in our "sci-fi culture" (think about "Star trek"). I took biological nanobots (real) imbued them with the concept of organization (I recall an episode in Star Trek:TNG where a race of mechanical nanobots with a collective intelligence is accidentally created, giving ordinary service nanobots the capability of communication). So i made somethig already part of "sci-fi culture".
Anyway, back on topic.. i don't intend to change the storyline, just to deepen it, hoping that it somehow will give ideas for nonlinear developement, psionic warfare and perhaps a future alien campaign.
For example, with the idea of engineered races dev can create lots of new alien types in the future. If instead my ideas will die here no problem.