It is generally believed that Umiak interstellar civilization is older than the Loroi interstellar civilization, but it's not clear by how much; nobody knows the dates of the Umiak timeline or the location of their homeworld (including most of the Umiak that you're likely to run across). If the Umiak have been steadily expanding (which seems likely), then there's a limit to how long ago they could have started. The Loroi theorize that, assuming that the Umiak creation story is true, the post-Fall rebuilding period for the Tizik-tik and the subsequent struggle with the Hal-tik must have been drawn out over many tens of thousands of years.Mr.Tucker wrote:How old is the current Umiak civilisation? It seems that they were already an industrial species when they finished conquering their co-evolved planetary rivals (roughly 1000-2000 years after the fall of the Soia). Did they then resort to infighting or did they jump into space and become a spacefaring species? (which would make them substantially older then the Loroi). Do they have an innate cultural hatred of any Soia-related species due to their suffering at the time of the empire ?
All of this has been tried before; it's kind of "Total War 101." The Umiak left some nasty surprises for the Loroi when they started losing territory in the Semoset offensive.TrashMan wrote:Now, make a virus that has a really long incubation period, attack a Loroi plant and bombard it, but don't destroy it fully. Launch virus missiles among the regular bombardment ones. Wait for the Loroi relief effort. As Loroi travel to and from the planet, the virus spreads. When it hits, it hits in multiple places and spreads rapidly. Massive damage before a cure can be found.
Both sides have very sophisticated medical technology that can detect pathogens, even if they can't immediately cure them. There is very little direct access to enemy populations in this war, and whenever it does happen, the affected system is usually quarantined and carefully screened for this sort of thing. In addition to their many other shortcomings, biological agents are much more difficult to spread between star systems than they are between cities on a planet; an infected individual can't just hop on a plane and be spreading the disease far and wide in a matter of hours the way one can in a terrestrial example.