I just realized that the whole war lasted less than a year. It really only consisted of a few battles before the Federation lost. I knew their society was fragile but I didn’t realize it was that fragile!
Maybe it was just the right timing, but it looked like as soon as one species, the supposedly weakest species, decided to stand against them, they fell apart.
They had a shadow fleet larger than any in the known galaxy and still lost to the newcomers. If the people in charge of using said fleet had the same “prey” instincts that the public Federation fleet had then that might make sense why they never went on the offensive. But that fleet was run by people who were in on the joke. They weren’t trained to just run away.
I dunno. The more I think about it, the more I think “how tf did they lose?” And the answer is usually “because it’s an HFY story”