Evil Empire

Microsoft
Bill Gates. MS. MS Windows. The Microsoft Corporation.

A race in VGA Planets, it is not difficult to see what they are based on. They favour fighters strongly, featuring just one torpedo ship (and only a few sucky ones on PLIST2). Their ships are heavy and expensive, their largest fighter carrier being as strong as the legendary Cube of Borgs (but cheaper!).

Specialties:

• Special mission: Dark Sense - they can detect all colonist settlements, except Rebels', with this mission, regardless of defenses on target planet.
• Free Fighters: They automatically receive a number (5 in default settings) of fighters to each every turn, free of MC cost (they still do cost minerals, though). Since fighters are so damn expensive, especially for newbies, this feature makes their huge carrier capacity actually usable.
• Imperial Assault: If they have undamaged Super Star Destroyer, or SSD, in orbit of enemy planet, they can dump 10 colonist clans (supposedly a task force of 1000 Storm Troopers - I suppose this means their aim got better after all) on the planet and the planet's theirs, regardless of number of colonists on planets (y'know, defenses don't have effect if the SSD got this far). This sounds pretty dreadful, but since the SSD has to be undamaged, your salvation is in making heavy, overlapping minefields and intercepting the SSDs in time. Nevertheless, quite handy.
• Their shiplist features a hyperjumping ship. (Yeah, this isn't exactly a racial trait but close enough)

Evil Empire n.

[from Ronald Reagan's famous characterization of the communist Soviet Union] Formerly IBM, now Microsoft. Functionally, the company most hackers love to hate at any given time. Hackers like to see themselves as romantic rebels against the Evil Empire, and frequently adopt this role to the point of ascribing rather more power and malice to the Empire than it actually has. See also Borg and search for Evil Empire pages on the Web.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.

Track listing:

• People of the Sun
• Bulls on Parade
• Vietnow
• Revolver
• Snakecharmer
• Tire Me
• Down Rodeo
• Without a Face
• Wind Below
• Roll Right
• Year of tha Boomerang (sic)

This is heavy stuff, it drips with anger.