I'm thinking I may have to put the Collective into stasis so to speak. I'm being forced to increasingly go in a direction I don't want them going and, in order to protect my vision for them, I may have to freeze them and hush them to sleep until such a time I can re-emerge with them without compromising my design for them, if that ever comes. In this time, we could assume they did what they did for decades back in the original RP and just quietly fade back into their territory before springing out to contact people again afterwards