Now they've been seen in game and it was awesome, I have to admit I got a bit over excited last night when it happened I thought I'd share some thoughts on where I hope it goes from here.
Synical bit first. After wathcing a good few of these, it seems they all follow the same patern so its obviously a scripted, cut scene type thing. I'm hoping this isn't simply an appease the masses type event, but lets be honest, some of the stuff FDev has done has been a bit anti-climactic and we've had to wait an age for the next thing to happen.
There are two things I'd like to see. These are only outlines and I've tried to keep it realistic in that they are implementable and not silly out there ideas which would take too much time and resource from the devs
1. Proper layered story telling; for example, plot twists such as these aliens (or others) turn out no to be evil but want to help us. I know this is a big theory already but pushing it to Mass Effect 2 Leigon/Geth heights (no spoilers, if you haven't played, do so. Immediately) would be great. The only issue with it is how greifers are dealt with i.e those that just kill the allies because, well, a-holes. I suppose they could just be simply ignored and if one is destroyed by a human CMDR another one simply spawns/jumps in. Hopefully they'd get bored soon enough.
2. More dynamic Community Goals and such based around the ailen threat. For example an offensive is launched by the Thargoids (which we will lose) in a system and the aims are to transport refugees out, deliver aid/munitions and fight the incursion. The dynamic and cool bit comes from rather than having set areas where you just go to fight, they could attack the stations periodically, say every hour or 2. I'm seeing a couple of capital ships, NPC's and human CMDR's fighting a frantic action a few klicks from a station while others get the civvies out (think the Battlestar Galactica miniseries and the escape from Ragnar Anchorage).
An icing on the cake would be, if you are in station when an attack happens you can telepresence to a station mounted cannon or orbital defence platform and blast away. Not sure how difficult that would be for them to implement but it would be amazing.
Also CG's the other way where CMDR's are called on to attack Thargoid fleets and, better still, installations. Cause x amount of damage over the course of the CG and they are driven out.
During all this, GalNet and in system NPC speech should be awash with panic, bravado and general chatter.
Anyway, I can hope!