Perhaps this is just a sign that I need to go to bed, but I thought I would post this as an irrelevant observation.
So the Acturians, the metal CEO guys, right? (I said this elsewhere, but I liked the bit in the the story text about the metallic CEOs doing planetary "acquisitions", it was a cute flavor touch.)
Those guys seem like jerks. Were they the ones that blew up my planet with a moon? I think so. I think they have possession of the ruins now. I want those ruins. I don't know if I can have them, but I know that at least, I don't want THEM to have them.
Also they've got real, ugly, metallic faces.
So I decided to make their lives absolutely miserable. I'm playing on easy, it's my first game, and I really don't have any clue what I'm doing beyond that I should be doing dispatch missions.
I parked my flagship outside their home planet, and decided that I would just smash every single thing in orbit. I ran a bunch of steal technology missions to eliminate their tech advantage, and each time I did I smashed all their satellites.
Life on their home planet is slowly getting worse and worse as their society falls into chaos. I destroyed their hospitals, their weather satellites, their shipyard construction facilities, every single thing I could find.
I have no idea what the effect of this is. I assume I can make them too weak to withstand an invasion, and then maybe make one of the other races hate them and take them out?
No idea, but for the moment I love the fact that I'm some kind of intergalactic space a**hole, smashing my enemies into the stone age as they shake their fists and rage impotently into the sky.