Since we are dealing in science fiction and not science fact, all things are possible. Take Jules Verne for instance: Journey to the centre of the earth we all know how that went, utterly rediculous, but a nice read and a movie.
And he shot 3 people to the moon from a ground based cannon during the civil war era. Again Science fiction anything is possible, all it requires is a sceric of believeability, plausable story line and impressive pictures/graphics/cut scenes to both entertain and baffle.
I'll leave out natural selection, it works here, but since I've never visited an alien world and studied their 'possible' evolutionary path I can not with any credibility assert that it would work for them also.
* Second, it would be tactically unsound (more appropriately, it would be *utterly stupid*) to engage an unknown enemy in a direct assault. Again, in order to rise to absolute dominance, XVI is likely to have fought several wars (and obviously won all of them). Hence, the concept of 'data gathering / reconnaissance missions' and tactics such as 'probing enemy defences before striking' couldn't possibly be beyond it.
I'll post these two excerpts from a decent article about engaging a superior force. As I suspect you may not be from this planet and may not understand human nature and the mind of a fundamentalist/freedom fighter.
The overarching strategy to counter a superior force is the idea of a war of a thousand pin pricks. That is the superior force's material and organization, and its underlying bureaucracy and logistics are very costly. Being costly means that the superior can not necessarily exist in the field as long as the inferior force or endure the political outcomes of such a drawn out war. The inferior force using its speed, adaptability, avoidance of direct confrontation, and its ability to not only strike on the superior force on the field but also its underlying organization at the time and place it chooses means that the inferior force will always have the advantage.
In conclusion, as the world becomes "flatter," that is money, information, and small arms are easier to acquire by individuals and small groups the overall nature of warfare has become more asymmetrical. Look at the defining conflicts and violent moments of our time: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 9/11, the Mumbai attacks or the war in Gaza, all these are linked via the usage of asymmetrical warfare or its components. It is important to realize that war, now more than ever, is not about technical superiority but each sides ability to adapt and evolve to be "successful" given its context.
* How would you justify a (rather sudden) interest in diplomacy, on behalf of XVI?
* 'Good old-fashioned radio waves' have a major disadvantage, story-wise. They can be easily detected, even with today's technology; radio waves are something *we* have a pretty good understanding of. It'll make identifying any XVI hosts dead-easy: if a person has the same electromagnetic profile as a mobile network relay, then he/she is surely infected ! Smiley
OK my point here would be thus: It is called subversion.
"Subversive activity is the lending of aid, comfort, and moral support to individuals, groups, or organizations that advocate the overthrow of incumbent governments by force and violence. All willful acts that are intended to be detrimental to the best interests of the government and that do not fall into the categories of treason, sedition, sabotage, or espionage are placed in the category of subversive activity." excerpt taken from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubversionOne does not win wars by death and destruction alone, it is better to cripple your enemy than destroy it. With the ufo's flying around in our skys we are constantly aware of a 'superior' force. You will take note that in the original Xcom games as in this one, missoins are usually called Terror missions and while they do kill humans that is most likely in response to our proding around and hampering their efforts to gather tissue. Killing of our compatriots, not only demoralises our forces, but sends a message to the local populous that we are only killing you because you interfere in our actions. Which would lead us to believe that if we allowed them to do their thing they would not wantanly kill us. Which again opens the door to a possible peace treaty with XVI and our governments should not be harassing them. Thus the aliens are engaging in subversion.
* NO!! One cannot ignore or downrate the necessity of having (*some* form of) FTL propulsion capability, in a story that involves Galactic exploration/conquest. There *must* be a very good reason why FTL drives seem to appear so often in works of science-fiction, regardless of media. Think about this very carefully: our Galaxy is huge, of almost incomprehensible size; the distances any space faring race would have to travel between neighboring stars are incredible; several generations could easily succeed aboard such a spacecraft -- from a human perspective. In order to be able to negotiate such distances within a more palatable, human-like timeframe, one is forced to resort to a plot device such as an FTL drive... Not to mention that, should XVI be lacking such means of locomotion, then the whole Galaxy-wide dominance would be out the door as well.
Yes there is a good reason why Sci-fi writers like to speal of FTL drives, because it is an established literary means of transport. There are many other ways that the aliens could travel from point to point, but FTL is the simplest and easiest for readers to both understand and grasp.
By indroducing a new form of travel you need to establish some form of ground rules for that travel. For example XVI could travel by means of a galactic doorway, where stepping through the doorway on this site instantaneously transports you to a position that could be measured as 50 light years away as the crow flies. How is this possible well it was explained in an episode of Stargate.
The alien race explained it thus to McGyver er.. O'Neil. See this piece of paper, you are here on this side, and we are over here on that side (opposite and opposing sides of the paper). See what happens when we bend the paper in half but not fold it, just bend it. Those two opposing points come together, now if you imagine this pencil is a craft or means of travel from oneside to the next. Alien then rams pencil through paper and creates hole, then pushes pencil all the way through. Jack O'Neil stares in disbelief alien says forget it. Basically once the craft of object is all the way through to the other side, space unbends. All you would need is a machine or power source capable of bending space. Where is FTL? don't need it.
We must not forget that XVI is at least 1,000,000 years ahead of us, and the original host life form was how many millions ahead before infection?
Although the downfall of a hive mind is that even though the host mind has fantastic technological advancement, it does not always follow that XVI will know how correlate and catagorise that information for further study or use.
So even though it took XVI 700k years to build a wormhole or what have you, that can be easily explained by its basic limitation.
XVI is not intelligent, it is linked via a mental network of semi to highly intelligent life forms. It can only operate at peak effeciancy at the level of the highest intelligence it has to work with. If say the creator race, had stale mated in their development and had been in slow decline because of a technologically decadent society. Then XVI would be hampered by this mode of thought and would not be able to progress at a faster rate, unless it ingested in to its psyche a more intellectually fluid race like humanity for example. XVI will be forever doomed to roam the universe resource stripping and assimilating. Much like the decadent borg.
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It was't even my leven of discussion.