at least 3 existential threats he cant fight and could kill his kingdom at will. Us, the Clans, and the Hegemony and the last as been trying to engineer a fall since the league fell.
We couldn't attack him. Period. You said it yourself, we can't play space mongols
Clans could attack him, but they can't win. They are even more fractured than in canon by grace of having three faction instead of two, and Crusader clans are losing mechs and warriors as we speak, making invasion that actually threatens the FedCom practically impossible outside outside decapitation strike which would demand a huge change in their overall strategy and demand them to largely ignore Terra and try to kill Hanse specifically. This is extremely unlikely.
Hegemony can attack him and win, but some reason, they didn't, despite they had resources to take IS by force anytime.
The crusaders could still try or the clans decide the best way to defend the IS is to invaded it first. The clans are nuts and leaderships changes fast. Give them 5 to 10 years and we will face new problems from them. A lot of them want to invade just for the chance at glory though our example has probable been a slap in the face that no it will not be that easy.
Yes, they can attack, but they can't win. Too many things are stacked against them, with IS being aware of them, the invasion, and preparing, along with general treaty for exactly this opportunity.
The fact we are still researching stuff says otherwise though yeah we are starting to hit the point where there is less and less paths we can explore.
We can go Gateway route, but that's for building wide in a long game. It has no benefit if we can actually reach endgame anytime soon. We should try to expand research budget next time in case we indeed need to research something, there are signs that further research simply auto-fails.
They wake up things go to shit. They have fail safe deep cover agents with nukes or bio weapons they could break the houses. That happens it becomes a free for all between a shattered sphere. We still have not meet the coalition that made the robot and i presume the hamsters are on our side of the IS because we found signs of them with the robot and the hegemony set up where they did to use the IS as a ablative shield just in case or as a fallback point if the hamsters did invade.
They would have reached IS already, or we would show sign of active fighting against them. It seems that Hegemony only fights Algenon only because they can't fight back effectively, with no intention to win, only to justify continuation of their regime in their corner of galaxy.
We do need the intelligence action to finish to actually confirm this assumption, but as things are now, its unlikely they are far ahead
We have no idea what we would find or even if we can get data. Not like we can insert agents either. This is grasping hoping to find and even if we do? We still need to kill the hegemony because they are a threat to literally everyone else. We also dont know if the hamsters are even still a thing. They could be dead and we could be facing so other race or hell for all we know expanse earth or clancy earth who have had centuries to build up. Isots means anything could happen or appear.
Clancy's or Expanse's Earth are harmless. They are non FTL setting and are pretty much stuck, either on their planet, or in their solar system. Unless Expanse come with Protomolecule and Builders tech from later in the book, they are pretty much harmless. Gates from Expanse actually rely on preexisting network.
I am pretty sure that factions like Imperium of Man from W40k, Interim Coalition of Governance from Xeelee etc. would invalidate the spirit of the game.