In spirit of putting the thread back on rails - like Syaoran and Skully did.
I like where it's at, every faction has their own stuff and technological advances which is somewhat unique to the general style of such faction. It's a good and fun difference to see a bit of competition between these IC and show that different approaches can be taken to grow in power. That's why I dislike the given of hard fiction myself. I honestly think it'll kill off this diversity and force anyone to do hard logic - which might mean there's just one way to go about FTL, or nearly limitless energy, planet-busters, etc. Etc.
In short, I like soft scifi more than hard scifi because it doesn't limited creativity as much.