thinking about how much the PCA absolutely sucks shit at their job. they have closed a grand total of zero (0) planets. the only reason anyone respected their authority over rubicon was that nobody thought there was coral left there anyway.
their closure satellites come with warning sirens to help you dodge them and they can't even reach anything on the planet's actual surface. their warships can only shoot down and can be destroyed in literally a single shot to the bridge. CATAPHRACT is designed so that it has to point its weak spot towards things to shoot at them. all of their effective weapons were made by the research institute and half of those don't even follow orders. ICE WORM literally just fucks off to go do something else halfway through your first encounter with it.
it's pretty obviously a metaphor, since the common thread through all of this is that the fear of a weapon is more dangerous than the weapon itself. nobody goes to the top of the grid because they might get shot down. nobody takes CATAPHRACT head-on, or tries to fly above a warship, because it's insane. but if you're not scared of them, they can't really do much. it's a good metaphor. but it's still really funny that they're so bad at this.
