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After much finagling and pressure, you manage to get exactly what you want.
The <span class="mu-s">Esaal</span> women have been more or less forced to share some of the Esaal secrets of spaceship armor. Plugging in the variables, <span class="mu-s">Deepscales Elijah</span> can finalize his battleship research project.
“The main difficulty in up sizing existing ship designs to be FTL capable is making sure the entire hull and interior is energized at the exact same time and rate. That's the only way to cross into hyperspace safely. We always assumed Azuirum would be used as interior struts... but to simply use plates of it along the hull as both armor and as a method of rapid conduction? It's so simple and low effort, it's almost genius.”
<span class="mu-b">”But we can build them?”</span>
“-Ah, not quite, your Majesty. My apologies. Designs still need to be optimized and finalized by the AI network. We would either need a source of Azurium, another specialist, or a great economic boon to actually build our first one. I know my first design was too expensive to prototype, which is why I feel remiss in asking you for yet more computer resources to finish the research. Truthfully, I feel quite tired spending my whole career on it, even if it was necessary. Even with their secrets. Still, I hope to retire after this is finally done...”
Of course, the vast majority of the work was already done by your science overseer over his long career, which he has done dutifully. The Battleship would likely have been finished in a few more decades without the Esaal's help, but extracting some value out of your trade deal with them for minerals is quite favorable in your favor. Perhaps they only traded it because they knew you were already close, but you get the feeling that they were that desperate...
In the meantime, the Esaal womenfolk arrive for your meeting with them. They have come to accept your minerals, to keep up your end of the bargain.
