I've decided that my federation mates, after denying the folk on the other side of the Orphan Gate federation status, aren't fit to actually run the Federation. This is a free democracy, you see, and that means helping people! Using my absurd diplomatic power, I have officially retracted their right to vote about... Well, just about anything.
It's still technically the democratic version of a Federation, Galactic Commune or whatever, but I've elected myself President Forever and also given the President sweeping political powers within the Federation. Last time we fought a Galactic War the idiots took like 5 systems and not much else, and only after letting both sides' WE hit 100, despite the AI's WE hitting 100 in record time after I personally invaded their capitals - all three main capitals, plus the majority of the sector capital worlds in each nation.
Next time we fight a war, we're properly replacing their governments! No way am I going to sit here and watch Humans be sold on the slave market - more than that, since everyone's connected via hiveminded brainslug! It's like knowing Grandma's in a North Korean prison because she's logged into Facebook and making constant posts about it, it's just uncool.
I'm also getting ready to start popping FE's while I wait for the Crisis to hit. I've had hints that it'll be Prethoryn, but I don't know if that makes it certain or not - I haven't gotten any kind of vanguard or radio contact from them, so the Crisis hasn't actually begun yet, but I did get an Anomaly that suggested they've visited before.
The FE's are the only real challenge my empire faces now, as I approach level 10 in most of the combat repeatables. I have no idea if they'll actually be the challenge they look like, but they have ~200k fleet power where I'm just starting to hit 50k for each fleet, and I'm running out of Leviathans to smash. The other members of my Federation are also smashing Leviathans, interestingly, so I think we're about spooled up for a good showing in a War in Heaven. And that should last us until the Crisis.
Brain Slugs really make the genetics path the best one, don't they? My leaders live 210 years on average now anyway, and I can research the +5 years repeatable on an average of about a year with my tech output. They're functionally immortal, and everyone's slugged up and has 10% extra research speed just by default - meanwhile my machine leaders don't have slugs, and their greatest advantage of being actually immortal doesn't seem that amazingly overpowered in the face of a biological pop who can last until the length of this current game doubles, if I hire them now. 200 years from now, this game will be over, one way or another.
I wish there were repeatable techs for alloy, consumer goods, and strategic resource production. Even if it was 1% per repetition, it'd make getting my production to the silly levels I want it at a lot easier. Influence and Alloys are now my only real bottlenecks, but my strategic resources could use a boost too. +40 motes just isn't absurd enough for me.