If you know there are aliens and that there are ways to collapse starlines… you move all colonies such that the node length between them is two. And on the odd-numbered nodes you leave a drone which watches for aliens, is sufficiently powerful to detonate the star before any ship could cross the space to the next starline, and pops the star at first contact. No matter what any invasion fleet of any size attempts, you only ever lose one world. And you may broadcast this fact as leverage when negotiating with the super-happy people. You will not attempt to forcibly change us, or our star will pop and cut off from you any possibility of interfering or rescuing anybody on our side. And so if you do not desire our eternal suffering as you view it, you must let us be while you attempt a diplomatic approach where we actually convince and understand and come to terms with each other. And if our values are entirely and intractably incompatible, then we just have to accept that as an unfortunate fact about the universe.
That idea doesn’t work because stars going off attract aliens from two nodes away. This plan calls aliens to all your colonies, when they see the adjacent star go off and investigate the flash they see via the jump to your colony worlds.
If you know there are aliens and that there are ways to collapse starlines… you move all colonies such that the node length between them is two. And on the odd-numbered nodes you leave a drone which watches for aliens, is sufficiently powerful to detonate the star before any ship could cross the space to the next starline, and pops the star at first contact. No matter what any invasion fleet of any size attempts, you only ever lose one world. And you may broadcast this fact as leverage when negotiating with the super-happy people. You will not attempt to forcibly change us, or our star will pop and cut off from you any possibility of interfering or rescuing anybody on our side. And so if you do not desire our eternal suffering as you view it, you must let us be while you attempt a diplomatic approach where we actually convince and understand and come to terms with each other. And if our values are entirely and intractably incompatible, then we just have to accept that as an unfortunate fact about the universe.
That idea doesn’t work because stars going off attract aliens from two nodes away. This plan calls aliens to all your colonies, when they see the adjacent star go off and investigate the flash they see via the jump to your colony worlds.
OH CRAP. That means the TRUE ENDING DOESN’T WORK. You just set off a beacon that attracted every alien to EARTH. Humanity is doomed.