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[WhisperDSP]

I now understand why people hate the Persean League. I truly get it. A 15-fleet blockade is "whoa what the heck?!"



For comparison, this is a fairly heavy detachment of my character - 15 fleets that are projected to outmatch this, plus battlestations, plus ground defenses, plus planetary shields:



I mean, yah, I'd sweat too. A Grand Armada. Especially when, going out to meet them in Hyperspace:



The Persean League Grand Armada. Yeah. This isn't a "blockade", this is a "we are going to use your face to wipe our boots, repeatedly". You don't send a Grand Armada out to blockade a four-planet system at the edge of the known universe.

So. Keeping in mind that I'm a really poor player. Cannot even pilot a ship (my reflexes are bad). They went down easier than I thought they would - admittedly I cut my teeth on the lesser fleets first and split things up a bit:



And...that was it? You're done?



For some reason I was feeling especially annoyed. I cannot quite pinpoint why - so I picked up nearly 2k of marines and pursued them through Hyperspace. Took out another 5-6 fleets on the way to Kazeron.

Then blew up the starbase, did a tactical bombardment, and mopped the floor with Kazeron until they were at about -9 stability. Dropped 80 gamma-cores on the local administrator and hit the road.

But yeah. I can totally sympathize with some players when they see that lot on the way. It is flipping cuckoo.

[Megas]

Currently, it is the combination of huge number of fleets, too easy to trigger (two worlds at size 4 and 3+) with no way to avoid short of abandoning a colony (other major factions do not need such drastic measures to avoid before size 5), and practically no reward if player does not want to join that makes the League crisis awful for me.  Also, took huge rep loss killing their armada piecemeal, and since I played without most of the hotfixes, surviving League fleets did not leave when the crisis ended, so I had to destroy them completely and personally for more rep loss.  -5s here and there, it all adds up fast.

At least next release, League will have a better reward (by robbing the accessibility from Pirates).  I do not know if the three-world threshold (3,3,4) will always help.  It would have for my last game that had only two good planets (and a gate) in my main system.  If next game I had three or more useful worlds in my main system, I would be inclined to colonize three as quickly as possible.

The Persean League Grand Armada. Yeah. This isn't a "blockade", this is a "we are going to use your face to wipe our boots, repeatedly". You don't send a Grand Armada out to blockade a four-planet system at the edge of the known universe.

Yeah, that looks more like a death march that will wipe your people off the map before they rebuild over your ashes and annex your worlds.

[Bungee_man]

Currently, it is the combination of huge number of fleets, too easy to trigger (two worlds at size 4 and 3+) with no way to avoid short of abandoning a colony (other major factions do not need such drastic measures to avoid before size 5), and practically no reward if player does not want to join that makes the League crisis awful for me.

I think League membership should nullify more crises. That'd make it worth using, and line up better with the text surrounding the crisis. If it took care of the Pirate (Thulian raider base has flavor text on this), Tri-Tachyon, Diktat, and Church crises in addition to the Hegemony crisis, it'd be much more of a valid option for early-game players, and joining for free would be a much more desirable reward.

At present, they just take your money and do nothing except fend off a not-too-strong Hegemony crisis, which is triggered by the same thing as the more dangerous (and not prevented) Luddic Path crisis.

[WhisperDSP]

Also, took huge rep loss killing their armada piecemeal, and since I played without most of the hotfixes, surviving League fleets did not leave when the crisis ended, so I had to destroy them completely and personally for more rep loss.  -5s here and there, it all adds up fast.

Absolutely.

“You Persean morons came in to start bullying all and sundry for a year, going ‘hur hur hur wadda ya gonna do about it? hur hur hur’. Then you get pissy when I beat you to a pulp and kick you in the balls 10-12 times.”

The Persean League Grand Armada. Yeah. This isn't a "blockade", this is a "we are going to use your face to wipe our boots, repeatedly". You don't send a Grand Armada out to blockade a four-planet system at the edge of the known universe.

Yeah, that looks more like a death march that will wipe your people off the map before they rebuild over your ashes and annex your worlds.

Yeah. They sent that to deal with 4 planets (in a system with a cryosleeper):

3x of 1m pop each (2x desert and 1x barren-bombarded)

1x of 1k pop (toxic)

(I built the pops up asap via cryosleeper while using the Pirates and Hegemony as punching-bags.)

[Daynen]

The real good guys are the independents.  You never hear them starting wars, blockading colonies or stealing AI cores.  They just chill.  They're like the capybaras of the Persean sector because you have to purposely go out of your way to make them angry.

[Bungee_man]

The real good guys are the independents.  You never hear them starting wars, blockading colonies or stealing AI cores.  They just chill.  They're like the capybaras of the Persean sector because you have to purposely go out of your way to make them angry.

Independents really do a number on the League's place in the narrative. If some number of these independent planets relied on the League to reinforce their independence (e.g. if the Church were after Baetis for the same reason it comes after the player), and the Hegemony really were expansionist, they'd make a lot more sense.

As it is, it feels like they're tilting at windmills. The Hegemony, at this point, doesn't even care if you're operating a drug den right outside its borders. They're too reasonable and noninterventionist for a faction whose sole purpose is 'defying' them to justify itself.


I get why Independents are implemented the way that they are, but having some/most of the game's independent markets under their umbrella would do a much better job of humanizing them while also paring down the questions that are raised by every single scavenger, explorer, and mercenary fleet being in a military alliance with Nortia and Derinkuyu Mining Station.

Within Hegemony space:

* Nomios and its cryo facilities being in Hegemony space while also being open to everyone makes them feel really weird as a faction, especially in conjunction with Galatia. They're way more kumbaya about these things than you'd expect them to be - moreso even than any real-world nation would be, even ones that are much more laissez faire.

* Agreus is a bit odd, given that it's also in Hegemony space and has very little keeping it independent. I'm not sure how I could justify this, honestly - unless the Hegemony are explicitly "the good guys", there's no way they'd tolerate a full factory complex outside of their economic and political control in their space when it's dependent on them for service anyways. Is there a reason they can't just be a Hegemony market known for independent sentiments?

* Nortia is technically in Diktat space, but they're written as a Hegemony client state of Askonian rebels. I get nobody being at the helm, but it's still odd that the Diktat hasn't crushed them, given that they're (ostensibly) their explicit enemies, and they've had years to fly over, break the defenders, and perform a tactical bombardment on the place, then just decommission all of the industry and bring it back home as scrap to sift through.

* Asharu has very little in terms of leverage, but is in a very Hegemony-controlled system. Given that the Hegemony has a lot of people to feed, it seems unlikely that they'd just let a food exporter stick around outside of their control..

* Derinkuyu is independent, for reasons I'm not really sure of. Given that they hosted pirates, I would think that the Hegemony would come in and clear that up, perhaps forcefully. Given that most of the tutorial presents the Hegemony in a very heroic light, having the reintegration of Derinkuyu occur after the player leaves might add depth to the opening scene.

* Orthrus is a mining world in Hegemony territory that supplies the fuel production facilities on Sphinx. Again, even if the Hegemony were the nicest, friendliest, most perfect polity on Earth, there's no way they'd let it be independent in any meaningful way.

Overall, it seems very strange that, while League-local independent markets all have text relating to how they escaped League control, Hegemony-local independent markets are apparently under no pressure to start paying taxes. I'd add some lines indicating tension with Nomios, and maybe an interaction or two in which the Hegemony intermittently blockades them. They're a nerve center for the sector's rich and powerful, located well within the Hegemony's grasp. I'd make Agreus and Asharu Hegemony markets, and add a line or two about their plucky independent polities gradually being brought to heel by the prevailing winds of the sector (in Agreus's case) or their dire situations being used to justify the appointment of a Hegemony governor (in Asharu's case). Orthrus, given its critical resource and its strategic location, could be said to have been taken over quickly and without any heed to local objections by Hegemony military forces early on in post-collapse history. Likewise, I think Nortia would be more plausible and more interesting if it were explicitly Hegemony-flagged, with some text about the rebels not especially liking the arrangement but recognizing that they don't have any other options. Derinkuyu could be a Hegemony market, with some text about British Navy - style treatment of the locals who turned pirate, even if they had no other options, or the hanging of a few examples while the rest remained as miners to keep the system's economy stable - but were forbidden to leave the station.


Within League space:

* Ilm is effectively a subsidiary of Mazalot, taking in workers and sending home remittances. It could use a better justification for remaining independent, given that it's League-dependent and in a League system.

* Ailmar is portrayed as making deals with other factions to stay out of the local kingdom (and the League). That seems a little too easy, IMO, given what they put the player through. Maybe it'd make more sense to base their independence around the local "kingdom" not wanting to admit them into the League, preferring to deal with them from within the protection of a larger polity while leaving them without it, and at a disadvantage when writing trade deals.

* Eldfell is independent, but explicitly stated to be run by economic power-players on Kazeron. It's a bit strange that Kazeron would let it get out of paying taxes and not act to secure it, given that it contains their refining facilities (instead of those being on Kazeron, for some reason).

These planets could be left independent, as a sort of demonstration that the League, while somewhat expansionist, is willing to let individual markets go without paying taxes as long as they aren't a major threat, don't cause any problems, and would be a hassle to integrate. It'd give some small amount of merit to their claims of supporting planetary self-determination. Maybe add something to their descriptions about appealing to the League for independence, and that appeal being granted - perhaps to keep up appearances, and perhaps because they have nothing worth taking. Alternatively, some kind of League guideline around permitting and guaranteeing independent colonies as a gesture of goodwill could be offered as an explanation for their existence, with Eldfell's local refining monopoly being a part of that outreach.

Other:

* Nova Maxios is the headquarters of the sector's independents. Right now, they've got a story about being plucky underdogs who make it despite the Powers that Be, but nothing really comes to cause trouble for them. Given that they're next to Kanta's Den and a Tri-Tach market, some kind of shady deals could be mentioned in reference to them. Alternatively, they could just be a League market - the League could use one or two success stories, given that almost all of their markets' narratives focus primarily on how awful they are. A working industrial complex with a nanoforge would be a prime target for the Hegemony or Tri-Tachyon, not to mention the nearby pirates. I think their story would be tied up very neatly if those things had caused problems for them in the past, leading their government to officially request League integration and receive military support as a result, almost operating as a mascot for the Persean League (with the rule exceptions and favoritism that entails) due to the very marketable story it lets them tell.

* Baetis, as mentioned, could just be a Church market, with the flavor text indicating that its authorities permit a bit more latitude than other Church worlds, but keeping close watch on the individuals that make use of the extra freedom. To help add a sense of ongoing history, it could formerly have been an independent world, before the Church imposed itself on the local authorities (with some covert assistance from the Luddic Path).

* Cethlenn is a money laundering site for Tri-Tachyon, which fits the faction's profile fairly well and emphasizes that Tri-Tach is a force for laissez faire governance in the sector, if only because oppression is expensive and yields no immediate income. Makes sense to leave it independent.


Overall, I think the independent markets would be more interesting allocated like this:

Nomios, size 3, Arcadia Star System (Independent; contested)

Agreus, size 5, Arcadia Star System (Hegemony)

Nortia, size 4, Askonia Star System (Hegemony)

Asharu, size 4, Corvus Star System (Hegemony)

Baetis, size 5, Eos Exodus Star System (Luddic Church)

Derinkuyu Mining Station, size 4, Galatia Star System (Hegemony)

Cethlenn, size 4, Hybrasil Star System (Independent)

Nova Maxios, size 4, Magec Star System (League)

Orthrus, size 4, Samarra Star System (Hegemony)

Eldfell, size 5, Thule Star System (Independent)

Ailmar, size 5, Westernesse Star System (Independent)

Ilm, size 5, Zagan Star System (Independent)

Instead of a bunch of rabble-rousers that are inexplicably perfectly coordinated, universally beloved by spacers, and tolerated by everyone in power, market affiliation with the Independents would be restricted to interests with either a very strong claim to it or a powerful patron faction with a good reason to forego power projection and tax revenue and back their independence.

[Megas]

* Baetis, as mentioned, could just be a Church market, with the flavor text indicating that its authorities permit a bit more latitude than other Church worlds, but keeping close watch on the individuals that make use of the extra freedom. To help add a sense of ongoing history, it could formerly have been an independent world, before the Church imposed itself on the local authorities (with some covert assistance from the Luddic Path).

Lucky for the Indies that Church does not care about taking over others' worlds if they are not habitable.  Church (or Knights) only care about taking over new habitable worlds (that have Luddic Majority).  Sure, the Church could have other reasons to fully take over Baetis, but if they treat the Indies as same as the player, then Baetis, as a non-habitable barren-bombarded world, would not be worth taking from the Indies.

[Bungee_man]

Lucky for the Indies that Church does not care about taking over others' worlds if they are not habitable.  Church (or Knights) only care about taking over new habitable worlds (that have Luddic Majority).  Sure, the Church could have other reasons to fully take over Baetis, but if they treat the Indies as same as the player, then Baetis, as a non-habitable barren-bombarded world, would not be worth taking from the Indies.

I don't think the crisis are meant to encompass the whole of a faction's policy. Being a habitable world amenable to Luddic settlement (to a degree that threatens production quotas) makes the player's colony a target, but that doesn't mean that being an in-system haven for uncontrolled, unmonitored sin wouldn't do so.

A note: Historically, many religions (including the two big ones) took a substantial interest in exerting authority over brothels, to the point where the Catholic Church ran the brothels in its domain at points. It's understood by religious authorities that sin needs an outlet, but that outlet is almost always directly, rather tightly controlled whenever possible.

[Antelope Syrup]

It's worth noting that Orthrus is in part, kept independent because it serves as a 'mascot' for the Hegemony's willingness to let independent polities maintain their independence if they see fit. It's also just too poor and not worth taking over in general, which is why I assume the Hegemony is usually willing to let many planets be independent, with the asterisk that they usually have some sort of charter or deal with the Hegemony on going for that independence. I don't think the solution here is to force a bunch of independents into the major factions to make the League look better. Some more narrative events that show the Hegemony doing some bad things is preferable because there are a scarce few.

[Bungee_man]

It's worth noting that Orthrus is in part, kept independent because it serves as a 'mascot' for the Hegemony's willingness to let independent polities maintain their independence if they see fit. It's also just too poor and not worth taking over in general, which is why I assume the Hegemony is usually willing to let many planets be independent, with the asterisk that they usually have some sort of charter or deal with the Hegemony on going for that independence. I don't think the solution here is to force a bunch of independents into the major factions to make the League look better. Some more narrative events that show the Hegemony doing some bad things is preferable because there are a scarce few.

> It's worth noting that Orthrus is in part, kept independent because it serves as a 'mascot' for the Hegemony's willingness to let independent polities maintain their independence if they see fit

Where is this stated, and why is this important to the Hegemony? In their interactions with the player, they state that they have to pretend that the player's colonies are already Hegemony controlled. They are very specifically against portraying themselves as willing to let worlds remain independent.

Further, this isn't about making the League look "better" so much as making it look plausible. Their whole deal is that they were formed to prevent the Hegemony from taking over the whole sector, and that their charter establishes and enforces rights for polities and spacers that let them maintain their sovereignty. While the Hegemony's marketing push is "hey, we're going to restore the Domain and make life better for everyone", the League's marketing push is "the Hegemony wants to take everything you have and throw it away on a lost cause". It would be one thing if this were explicitly written as lies and propaganda, but there's no indication that this is the intent - when League characters talk about independence, there are a number of ways to disagree with them, but none of them involve claiming that they are wrong about the Hegemony being expansionist.

It's also about making the Independents less bizarre as a faction/bloc. It makes sense for random backwater markets that nobody's trying to claim to share an alliance meter with the 'general populace' of the sector. Not so much heavily-armed Hegemony-backed rebels, an actual system-spanning polity with a manufacturing base and claimed territory, or the Luddic Church's local opium den.

[SafariJohn]

The state of the sector would make a lot more sense if spaceports and military stuff were immune to bombardment/raiding. Nobody in the sector has the manpower to conduct a serious ground invasion, so there would be no way to take an established market intact by force, only diplomacy and trickery.

[Antelope Syrup]

Where is this stated, and why is this important to the Hegemony? In their interactions with the player, they state that they have to pretend that the player's colonies are already Hegemony controlled. They are very specifically against portraying themselves as willing to let worlds remain independent.

It's stated in the planets secondary description.

  Ruled by a council of small family companies backed by outside investors, the Hegemony phoenix never saw fit to shelter Orthrus under its fiery wing. The reserves of resources too poor, the strategic value overshadowed by the militarized moon of Sphinx, and the polity too useful as a symbol of the Hegemony's alleged respect for independent worlds to integrate fully.

I agree that more needs to be done to characterize the hegemony as explicitly expantionist for the reasons you've stated, however you have to be careful not to also contradict the current state of the Hegemony in cycle 206. Our current Hegemony is still in the process of recovering from the Askonia Crisis and Second AI war, which were both massive blows to their capabilities. The current Hegemony is suffering from widespread logistical issues, a conflict in leadership, and is just sort of decaying a bit, so it makes sense they wouldn't be able to mount a decisive offensive against an external entity currently (the players colony perhaps being an exception).

[Bungee_man]

That is interesting. So, the Hegemony does claim to respect independent worlds (with the overwhelming plurality of indie worlds being within their sphere of influence), while also claiming that the whole sector is rightfully under their dominion.

If your claims about the Hegemony being in a bad spot / in decline line up with the story's intentions, that's definitely something that should be signaled more. As it is, they seem way too reasonable/generous for a faction that revolves around resisting them to make any kind of sense. Like, they're vaguely kind of authoritarian, but virtually everyone you meet that represents them and isn't actively opposed to their current leadership is presented as unambiguously good, whereas everyone representing any other faction is some shade of evil. It feels less like five factions with visions and histories vying for control of the sector's future, and more like the Hegemony and its rogues gallery. The fact that they're also the most powerful faction (best doctrine, largest map presence, most commission interactions, their own set of objectively-better ship variants, and so on) underscores this.

[Antelope Syrup]

That is interesting. So, the Hegemony does claim to respect independent worlds (with the overwhelming plurality of indie worlds being within their sphere of influence), while also claiming that the whole sector is rightfully under their dominion.

If your claims about the Hegemony being in a bad spot / in decline line up with the story's intentions, that's definitely something that should be signaled more. As it is, they seem way too reasonable/generous for a faction that revolves around resisting them to make any kind of sense. Like, they're vaguely kind of authoritarian, but virtually everyone you meet that represents them and isn't actively opposed to their current leadership is presented as unambiguously good, whereas everyone representing any other faction is some shade of evil. It feels less like five factions with visions and histories vying for control of the sector's future, and more like the Hegemony and its rogues gallery. The fact that they're also the most powerful faction (best doctrine, largest map presence, most commission interactions, their own set of objectively-better ship variants, and so on) underscores this.

100%. The Hegemony is characterized too positively in the games current writing. Also I'm not sure they have the best doctrine (I like the , and iirc the persean league has more total markets, but the Hegemony does definitely feel a little bit like the main character of the factions with how much special emphasis they get in so many different departments, like you said.

[SCC]

* Nomios and its cryo facilities being in Hegemony space while also being open to everyone makes them feel really weird as a faction, especially in conjunction with Galatia. They're way more kumbaya about these things than you'd expect them to be - moreso even than any real-world nation would be, even ones that are much more laissez faire.

People come to Nomios to either die or at least remove themselves from the society for many years. Why, exactly, would you want to stop your enemies from doing this?

* Agreus is a bit odd, given that it's also in Hegemony space and has very little keeping it independent. I'm not sure how I could justify this, honestly - unless the Hegemony are explicitly "the good guys", there's no way they'd tolerate a full factory complex outside of their economic and political control in their space when it's dependent on them for service anyways. Is there a reason they can't just be a Hegemony market known for independent sentiments?

Isn't Agreus already a Hegemony colony that is presented as independent due to not caring that much about towing Hegemony's line? At the very least, Hegemony grants a lot of power to land owners. Skathi is a Hegemony colony on paper, but in practice Tri-Tachyon has absolute authority there.

Nortia.

I don't have much of an argument besides "might as well ask why any pirate colony exists", but getting rid of a military independent market would be a loss.

* Asharu has very little in terms of leverage, but is in a very Hegemony-controlled system. Given that the Hegemony has a lot of people to feed, it seems unlikely that they'd just let a food exporter stick around outside of their control..

You seem to be treating food as if it was a weapon of mass destruction and not, you know, a fungible and low value commodity that Asharu is the third smallest exporter of. In addition to that, Asharu is technically claimed by Hegemony already, it's just that Hegemony doesn't care about making its presence known very well and Asharu government(s?) doesn't care about enforcing Hegemony laws themselves.
One thing to remember about Hegemony is that it seems to have a reasonable approach to colony government. If you have a government, that's great. If you don't, here's cookie-cutter democracy. Above planetary government it's a stratocracy, though.

Derinkuyu

I never noticed Derinkyu is pretty much loreless, huh.

Orthrus

I swear I recall reading some Orthus lore at one point... It could be a similar deal to Asharu, though. It could technically already be a Hegemony colony, Hegemony just doesn't care to enforce it planetside because it doesn't matter, it's a mining colony and nothing else.

Orthrus, given its critical resource

Oil in real life is very important not just because of its properties, but also because of its abundance. Except Orthrus isn't a significant volatiles exporter, it's one of the smallest. Orthrus could vanish and the market wouldn't feel a thing.

and its strategic location

It is of strategic significance, yes, to other factions. To Hegemony, keeping it powerless and unaligned is as good as owning it.

Likewise, I think Nortia would be more plausible and more interesting if it were explicitly Hegemony-flagged, with some text about the rebels not especially liking the arrangement but recognizing that they don't have any other options.

Haven't you just complained that it's weird Nortia wasn't crushed already? Unless they got security guarantees, it would be too dangerous for Nortia to align themselves with a major power, but if they did get the security guarantees, if Hegemony could defeat Sindrian Diktat unopposed, why would they not just conquer the whole system?

* Ailmar is portrayed as making deals with other factions to stay out of the local kingdom (and the League). That seems a little too easy, IMO, given what they put the player through.

Indeed. It's quite common for newcomers to face excessive hurdles compared to the establishment.
 

* Eldfell is independent, but explicitly stated to be run by economic power-players on Kazeron. It's a bit strange that Kazeron would let it get out of paying taxes and not act to secure it, given that it contains their refining facilities (instead of those being on Kazeron, for some reason).

Why would Kazeron destroy Kazeronian power players' tax haven?

* Nova Maxios is the headquarters of the sector's independents.

What

Right now, they've got a story about being plucky underdogs who make it despite the Powers that Be

If by "Powers that Be", you mean the space itself, I suppose...
Also, this would mean independents would have no heavy industry, which would make their ship quality worse than that of even pirates, on top of making raiding for blueprints impossible.

* Baetis, as mentioned, could just be a Church market, with the flavor text indicating that its authorities permit a bit more latitude than other Church worlds, but keeping close watch on the individuals that make use of the extra freedom. To help add a sense of ongoing history, it could formerly have been an independent world, before the Church imposed itself on the local authorities (with some covert assistance from the Luddic Path).

I suppose? I don't like it. I like some heterogeneity in my star systems.
And another independent military market goes kaput. I suppose this is a way to discourage non-alignment, but I'm not sure if it's necessary.

It's stated in the planets secondary description.

  Ruled by a council of small family companies backed by outside investors, the Hegemony phoenix never saw fit to shelter Orthrus under its fiery wing. The reserves of resources too poor, the strategic value overshadowed by the militarized moon of Sphinx, and the polity too useful as a symbol of the Hegemony's alleged respect for independent worlds to integrate fully.

I agree that more needs to be done to characterize the hegemony as explicitly expantionist for the reasons you've stated, however you have to be careful not to also contradict the current state of the Hegemony in cycle 206. Our current Hegemony is still in the process of recovering from the Askonia Crisis and Second AI war, which were both massive blows to their capabilities. The current Hegemony is suffering from widespread logistical issues, a conflict in leadership, and is just sort of decaying a bit, so it makes sense they wouldn't be able to mount a decisive offensive against an external entity currently (the players colony perhaps being an exception).

Ha! I knew it! Anyway, this is either deprecated lore or Alex forgot to add a line in the Samarra.java script, with the latter being most likely. Let me just make a bug report...


For completion sake, this is Derinkuyu's description that may or may not be canon.

Derinkuyu Station was built post-collapse on the superstructure of maintenance gantries intended for Atlas-class freighters. These were welded together and boosted out of Ancyra's orbit then stabilized in Galatian asteroid belt to serve as a base for mining operations. A recent lapse in public order involving the 'long walk' of the governing Hegemony colonel has seen control devolve to a loosely organized council of rogue miners.

That is interesting. So, the Hegemony does claim to respect independent worlds (with the overwhelming plurality of indie worlds being within their sphere of influence), while also claiming that the whole sector is rightfully under their dominion.

Might talk it up to independent worlds being a part of the Domain of Man (currently MIA), while Hegemony is its military and it only administers colonies of military importance.

If your claims about the Hegemony being in a bad spot / in decline line up with the story's intentions, that's definitely something that should be signaled more.

Check out Qaras.