@HaelReferencing our previous talk on my entry to this, would it be possible that I mesh both into one? As in that something happened to my empire and all that's left of it is a giant armada of ships a la Quarian style from Mass Effect?

The egomaniac who created Kazzlehorf at least died in a suitably ironic way. (There was literally no funerals or big memorial parades for Kazzlehorf since no one even noticed the "real" Kazzlehorf ever died to begin with)

You will never be Kazzlehorf.

Deal with it.

No!

That is bad bad bad bad bad.

My species may actually start making functional societies that aren't doomed to perpetual stagnation (provided they don't get killed off in the war anyways), that can't be allowed to happen.

@Brink_

How about an alliance with the X'Cor

<Snipped quote by Lauder>

Hmm, a civilization that places far too much of an emphasis on a meritocracy based on something as barbaric as kildcount and is a major proponent of slavery? The Republic gleefully denies the offer, and instead arms its trade and assault cruisers alike with rifles specifically fitted to tear off six appendages at once.

<Snipped quote by Brink_>

The Coalition was made up of society's rats. Vermin, swarming around from bar to bar, each looking for their next hit, one alien trying to scam the big one off of another. Rejects and losers fluttered from one haphazard, junked-together station or government to the next, all regulated by a planet-sized bureaucracy. I thumbed away 50 credits to my dealer - a shabby Kazzlehorf who'd never once given credence to the thought that his product might be subpar. A drone hovered at the Kazzlehorf's shoulder, wires sagging from its housing.

The rezstick was a refreshing contrast to the blasted up life support vents that spewed an acrid haze. My implants were humming with ice from the rezstick. It wouldn't be long now; I just had to get to the right bar.

Ragnorak Station was my city, and I don't mean that figuratively. When your father is the King of a solar system, you get space stations for your sixteenth birthday. What a waste. I didn't know how to run the station then, and still don't have anything to do with it now.

A Xim shoved its way past me toward the bar. The damned bug had to have been new around here; it hadn't caught the virulent cynicism and apathy that came with the Coalition. It was glaring at me, like I was personally responsible for the blasted-up war between our species. I followed its wake into Mitchell's.

Johnny - or rather, JN.E - was working the bar. It nodded its servoes at me as I took up my usual roost, handing me an Atomic Fizzler. I sipped the high-octane fruit concotion as I scanned the room for my next victim. My veins were buzzing; the rezstick was starting to do its thing.

When I first saw him, I knew we were meant to be. He wore the open vest of an ice miner, just enough for me to see his chiseled abs and grizzly face. I circled the rim of my drink with my finger, not breaking eye contact. He strutted up to the bar, leaning next to me, his hot breath on my face.

"What's an angel like you doing in a place like this?" he asked.
"I own it," I replied.
"Pleased to finally meet you, Mitchell," he said.
"It's Helena." That's when the rezstick finally tore open my mind. Drops of bliss slipped off my forehead into the void of space beneath our feet. I was leading him back to my room - a room - at some hourly motel. I was ordering us champagne, he was laughing, laughing, laughing. The barman came to ask for my drink, Johnny was a real boy now, and we were in a room with a sagging bed and peeling wallpaper. Yellowed vidscreens shouted at me to buy more Yamatchi products as a laughing Kazzlehorf proudly proclaimed that Kazzlehorf had the best deathsticks....

(We probably need more conquering empires. To my knowledge there's only one so far.)

<Snipped quote by Arawak>

Why? Are you concerned that there won't be enough action?

Because it would be easy for me and @Sigma to get a Xim vs. Federation war going on again- a war in which everyone would start taking sides and leading to an intergalactic World War.

OR perhaps MONARCH has some kind of systems failure, leading to a drone accidentally firing on someone of another nation, raising tensions between the two groups and all their allies.

OR perhaps a group of rouge not-Kazzlehorfs stir up distrust between Kazzlehorf and other nations.

Few of our nations are conquerors, but many of them are paranoid, unfriendly and distrusting of eachother. It wouldn't be hard to turn that into tension, economic warfare, cold war, or just plain war. None of the nations in WW1 were evil, X'Cor-style villains, and yet it still happened.

<Snipped quote by Hael>

Just one more empire that is all conquer-y in nature with a different mindset from the X'cor is really all I want. A conqueror with more of a 'benevolent dictator' edge for instance. The sort of civ that believes "we have to make everyone citizens of our civilization, it is our burden". (Does this already exist?)