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"We'd rather get et by alien robot spiders, thanks anyway." (Possible spoilers!)

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Schilcote:
Why do the PHALANX supporter countries pull out?

In X-COM they had a good reason; the aliens offered 'peace treaties', and though the aliens weren't exactly trustworthy it seems reasonable that governments might see a treaty as an attractive option if X-COM shows it can't win the war.

UFO:AI doesn't have that though; at least, as far as I'm aware. PHALANX is the only hope; however poorly they're doing, pulling their funding isn't going to make the bloodspiders any less interested in sucking out your guts. Now, we could just rip off X-COM, but I don't like that idea. So, here's two more (mind you, I haven't read all the story yet in the latest dev version, but don't worry about spoiling me):

My first thought is that the member governments simply can't fund PHALANX anymore. The aliens target infrastructure and factories instead of just randomly collecting biomass like the current research text seems to suggest. Eventually, if PHALANX doesn't succeed in shooting down enough UFOs, the supporter nations just can't economically function anymore, and have to pull out. This doesn't make perfect sense though; surely 'avoiding species-wide annihilation' would be absolute top priority above everything (of course, that raises the question of why PHALANX has to buy its own equipment...)?

Second thought, which is slightly better, is mind control. I assume there's plans to implement mind-control tech like X-COM had, since soldiers have Mind scores and everything now, and we know the aliens are telepathic. If the aliens scaled that up, they could simply mind-control large masses of people to not pay their taxes (or, perhaps more likely, just make them lie down and do nothing). This kind of ties into the former, with the governments simply being unable to fund PHALANX anymore, but doesn't require that the alien strategy change that much and seems to fit a little more with their nature. One successful op by the aliens could disable a huge number of people, making them easier to collect. Plus, the player could launch missions to destroy the control transmitters, giving us a way to take our funding back!

Of course, both of these assume the governments are taking the alien threat seriously; I realize they don't ever actually come out and say "we intend to exterminate everyone". But I don't think it's really very realistic that any government would say "yeah, they're killing people and experimenting on them and all, but I really think we should be spending more on schools and roads..."

EDIT:

I put this in Feature Requests because there's no 'story discussion' board. I request that the plot make sense! :P

EDIT:

Oh, I suppose that's what the Design subfourm is for. Got too excited, I guess.

Eegxeta:
Your on to something, but instead of that off the wall mind control thing. The UFOs are collecting people. If the UFOs take too many people the country loses its ability to fund you so if too many UFOs make a successful mission then the country will send less funds because it simply can't send more.   

Schilcote:
That'd be an awful lot of people, though.

Eegxeta:
That is true but wouldn't the mind control wear off after the aliens leave anyway. The mind control has to be done by a telepath and I don't see how that could extend to affect large enough areas to impact the funding.

Eegxeta:
The governments could say your not working we are better off using the money to protect ourselves. The opening story said they had little success so if you don't do better than they did they stop funding.

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