A huge part of this game that interested me was the accurate science, so I'd like to better integrate that with the storyline. After all, most of the storyline stuff is presented as text documents, so an alternate campaign won't need any fancy new code.
My points so far are:
1. The thousands and thousands of years for XVI to develop are way over the top, even if we dumb them down a lot, their science should still be more advanced that what we see in game (most of which is a century or two ahead at best).
2. Replacing Psionics with real EM radiation, have XVI communicate via chemicals(biochem markers made in the body that contain a lot of information in chemical or DNA form and can be deposited on a surface or exchanged directly), weak electric fields (skin to skin contact), radio waves (brain computer interface)
3. FTL... I'd like not to break the laws of physics, and modern physics have left the door barely open on it. Basically, any non-wormhole form of FTL involves time travel, it still takes you a few decades to travel from Sol to say... Sirius, but in a fit of synchronized hand waving, your FTL drive turns back time so you arrive there instantaneously. A drive like this would be limited to "jump nodes" however, whose connections are all hard coded and immobile in order to avoid accidental time machines that can get you home before you started off (which kind of makes sense, any possible combination of jump points that would have resulted in a closed time like curve would have been destroyed at the moment of their inception as cauchy horizons enveloped them, but that's bot speculation and digression.).
Basically, 2 forms of FTL:
Wormholes: Require exotic matter, must lie well outside any gravitational field, requires stupendous amounts of matter and energy to create, must be transported to their final destination by STL, will be destroyed if anything over 1% of their total mass attempts to cross. Exotic matter also allows for STL warp drives, exotic matter and wormholes lie well outside XVI's currently demonstrated technological abilities, must be obtained from other source unless currently observed technology is deliberately obsolescent.
Jump Drive: The softer science alternative, instantaneous travel between star systems depending on the mechanics we decide on, but it feels like a cheat, not having any more details on this.
4. Possible victory conditions I think should be realistic:
-Reverse engineering of XVI leads to brain computer interfaces that Phalanx uses to usher in the singularity, merging the sentience of a Human mind with the computing power of the Internet in order to create a entity that can think and process at the same level as the XVI hive mind. New world Order, world peace, cool stuff we can do with this one.
-Humanity develops a relativistic starship and uses it to bring XVI to the negotiating table by threatening the wormhole (which would severe the local chapter from the rest of it's empire), XVI not really interested in Earth except as a valuable injection of new cultural ideas that the homogeneous hive mind can use. Some sort of cease fire is worked out.
-Humanity does destroy the wormhole, XVI largest concentration of industry near Sol is destroyed but there are still multiple instantiation in the Oort cloud and asteroid belt, XVI insurgents on Earth are mounting increasingly complex subversive campaigns, but Humanity is safe for the moment and can take prepare for the next fight, applying all the technologies it's found.
Comments? Questions?
