The Walzer Massacre is presented as a turning point in the Empire's war against crime. What were the overall consequences of that event on the UEE's or criminals' behavior?

Yeah, that was the backstory behind the Star Marine map of the...

No, not Echo Eleven, the other one.

Demien. Yeah, and so basically after Keller's Run, security had reestablished themselves in the system, and Demien was this outpost where a lot of families of the security people were living, and everyone thought they were safe again. And the Walzer crew had been kicked out during the sweep, and they didn't like that, and so they attacked Demien...

Yeah, the idea was that they were going to take over the base and use it as a stronghold. They were going to kill everybody on the base and take it over, but Walzer was a kid, the son of an Advocacy agent, and sent out the SOS, which is why it was named... The Marines assaulted it. It basically sent a signal that Nexus was not secure, so it re-bolstered the UEE's attempts to crack down on the criminals that were refusing to give up their land. Weirdly enough, there were a bunch of events that were turning points for that war on crime, because Keller's Run is what kicked the whole thing off, and then there was the bombing of Cathcart, which happened in direct retaliation. It was part of their getting-tough-on-crime initiative, and then the Walzer Massacre was actually a retaliation for the bombing stuff, so it was a rolling mess.

Yeah, it's this ongoing struggle, because there was this tightening up of, oh, we're just going to focus our resources on the systems we can control and we're going to ignore these problem spots. But then the rot got so bad that the problem spots started spilling over into the nice parts, and so there was this pushback of, oh, we've got to clear it out and secure it. But then as soon as you clear out one nest, another one pops up, and it's this ongoing struggle of the Empire dealing with such a large amount of area to secure and to protect.

Yeah. Because the reason for the name Nexus was that it was at the center of, I think it was four or five unclaimed outlaw systems, Cathcart being one of them. Keller's Run, again, was the first time where they realized, we really don't have control over here, and it's actually very dangerous to have basically a small mini-nation within the heart of the Empire. And so that's why the UEE re-established dominance over Nexus, to break it up, to prevent them from being able to have a really large chunk of four or five systems that was uncontrolled.

But then the Vanduul attacks increased, and all the spending went towards the now recently claimed war effort, and now we see the repercussions of that in the new militia focus that's been happening, where the UEE is coming out and being like, you can deal with it. Which is exciting gameplay for you all, but it's kind of forcing the average Joe citizen to be out there with their gun defending themselves.