Madness, you say, in time of war? On the contrary. That mess of gatling lasers and fusion bombs, bumbling around the galaxy with ancient nuclear engines, would be about as much use on defense as an assembly of tissue paper and paint. They aided us in all our previous wars, but have now gone far beyond the horizon of obsolescence: Unlike ships built from our current technology, they would be all but useless against the Meklar. We can't afford the massive cost of simply keeping them from crumbling in space, and the scrap metal from the hulls alone will more than double the resources available in our emergency reserve.
By the same token, there's no point in wasting energy sending more spies to their deaths. Perhaps later we can consider resuming our efforts more slowly and carefully, but for now we have higher priorities. And as I was speaking of the emergency reserve, it's high time we ended our taxation policies: I'm cutting them to zero! If this isn't it right now, we'll never have an emergency. I'm raiding our enormous treasury, digging deep enough to double the production of every planet in our empire this year -- we're going to need it!
We may lose worlds anyway - there are some we can't possibly defend if they come for them right away at Ion speeds - but at least now we'll be prepared as soon as we possibly can be! Unemployed Alkari throughout our empire are sent to help build up hostile worlds, while population growth incentives are established on worlds with idle factories. Technological research is stepped up significantly.
That's more than three times the research budget I started with, before I canceled builds of a bunch of stationary defenses and started funding our planets from the imperial reserve, even though Galos has stopped researching and is going all-out instead on a huge placeholder ship's hull. It may still be some time before we start seeing breakthroughs, but this will be well worth it in the end. Some discoveries require less research than others though: Officially, the location of the fabled Orion system has long been a closely-guarded Imperial secret, not even included on the official military maps of the galaxy. That policy is centuries out of date though, and the merest glance at the environmental survey maps shows where it must be:
It's the only system we haven't managed to explore that doesn't hold a Meklar colony: An old red star in the center of the galaxy. Of course, we're nowhere close to the technology needed to take on the system's legendary Guardian. For now, it's just a matter of holding on, building up our population and factories, and hoping we can fend off those Meklar fleets!
