>>5505101>An all-out war campaign would cause unnecessary damage to the planet and drastically decrease the number of people, or tools, recoverable after the conflict.Depends on the methods you use imo. I feel like, given our efforts were to capture as many people alive, we've minimized casualties quite considerably. Even their ships were disabled not destroyed, the crews captured.
We've already won the war campaign, now comes the occupation. As for losing a few weeks of time, if anything we've gained whatever amount of time it would have took in the lengthy "destabilization" process. Potentially even spared many lives that would have been lost in a massive civil war.
Besides, the growth of the planet will come far less from what we recover from these people and more from what we invest and construct on this world. We could have completed devastated it to rubble and rebuilt it better and stronger than before, us being conservative was just a nice cost efficient bonus.
>Building a space station around this world would be the biggest waste of timeEvery planet has to have a spaceport. A planet without a spaceport contributes nothing to our empire, because you won't be able to ship any tithes or recruits to and fro.
>If you could conquer the world without killing so many people, wouldn't that be better?My thinking is that civil wars are messy, and could result in just as much if not more local loss of life, damage to infrastructure, and the economy than a quick and overwhelming campaign conducted by super soldiers to the effect of capturing the location intact. Particularly when you are able to deploy and use large scale sci-fi human collection methods.
>I believe we can leave worlds much better off than we found themWhatever the result, we are going to leave this world better off than we found it. Sure it may have fewer or even none of the natives it had, but it will have a large loyal denizen base and contribute to our empire. The world will be better, but we said nothing to the effect of it having to have the same population it had before. Think of it as how America may not be a nation full of the original natives and instead swollen with european immigrants, but it is much more advanced and was able to become a power capable of influencing world wars for good.