Even more impossible than you know, because at least one race of nonhuman sapients - the Vegans - are a current Vilani vassal.
My point is that excessive killing to the extent that other people consider you a threat will make your loved ones less safe.
I'm rather unaware of the setting, but I have to assume the reason why the Vilani don't seem to have a constant stream of geniuses is because they have a caste system. Their accessible pool of geniuses is only as big as their scientist caste. Then you have to shrink said pool down further; how many members of the scientist caste are sidelined or ignored because politically there are more important, more noble scientist caste members. Ones who are older or have greater power, the ones who decide which projects are worked on or even get present to the ruling castes for funding. Then you need to cut that pool even further for every potential scientist caste member from a powerful scientist caste family who also manages to innovate or invent even when surrounded by a culture that more highly values refinement and reliability.
I guess there are four possible solutions to this;
As an aside, I am really liking being able to give setting data at only the rate the MC learns it, complete with lack of omniscient understanding.
As an aside, I am really liking being able to give setting data at only the rate the MC learns it, complete with lack of omniscient understanding.
Which is hardly unusual for stories, but is not something I've done as often as I could have.
An excellent chapter, even if you are suffering from cranial incontinence.
I haven't had a chance to work it into her internal monologue yet, but Kadur Erasharshi's orbital nuking was precisely that - an attempt to force Terra's unconditional surrender by burning a few cities to prove he was serious, then saying that they had until the deadline to bend the knee before he burnt some more. Because if he'd just wanted to destroy humanity, his first salvo would have been a dinosaur killer. He was a very pragmatic man.
I'd like to point out that Schlock Mercenary Nano Tech would be great for this. Even if the damn stuff is weaponisable in a scary way.
I mean, that's out of context knowledge that she doesn't yet have any clue to being correct. As far as Zofia is concerned, the Terran's immediate concern is the potential for fighting back a full-scale Total war scenario against an massive interstellar empire that is (probably) fully willing to glass a planet in nuclear fire if the others will surrender because of it.
Actually no they are not. The answer amounts to not bite off more than you can chew and be the better option to the empire or successor fragments. The confederacy from what I can read got greedy and tried to take the whole pot the second they could when they did not have the military strength or political legitimacy to hold it which cost them everything. The empire is a stagnant stratified relic that sacrificed everything for stability which leaves it very vulnerable to dynamic and adaptive outsider threats. The Confederation has what it needs to win they just need to be smarter about it by not being a overt existential threat but being able to win any conflict or make it to bloody to bother with by nobles to caught up in intrigue while also being a better option to border worlds who see better prosperity as part of it than the empire.
The Issue with that thinking is that the 200+ IQ MC also stated that no one would ever know who set of her little WMD and there are plenty of ways it could have happend besides the Terrans, hell id in their shoes put the Terrans towards the BOTTOM of that list since they are by all accounts from the Vilani point of view backwards barbarians who could never, ever, EVER develop the kind of tech she just did, too much evidence would point thats it not being possible, or at the very least so horrendously unlikely id be more likely to believe that the descendants of that one dissident group that was REALLY into expanding on tech set the WMD off as they are a far more logical candidate. Especially potentially say those descendants finding the WMD while trying to find weapons they predecessors left behind but whoopsie the weapon is unfinished in its targeting limitations or they simply dont work properly with the breadth of time that has passed potentially by the targeting of DNA and those with certain DNA would have been spared but there not around anymore. Thus for all intents and purposes it really is a risk free nuclear option and one id have used in her position at the earliest possible opportunity. I wouldn't even need to think about it, my first thoughts would not be about moral consequences but figuring out how to deploy the weapon as swiftly, as broadly, and as as stealthily as possible.