Oh please, if you are for some reason so stubbornly attached to what is “natural”, as if humanity is some sort of mysterious force that is not part of nature itself, then go right ahead and rip your implants out and suspend all your cloning contracts, you glorious technological marvel, you. We routinely manipulate and shape living organisms and entire ecosystems alike, but when the Collective does it with improved speed, effectiveness and precision, suddenly they are committing some kind of affront to god’s world. Unless you are blinded by the dogma of some sort of cult, to think any of this is intrinsically wrong is just plain hypocritical on your part.
I should have guessed that only one so woefully ignorant on the Collective’s actual objectives could involve himself in this conflict with such passion and still side with EDENCOM of all factions. The factional militias that have fought alongside you at least fought for their homes, their beliefs and their culture. What have you fought for? A dysfunctional shell of a coalition used as a means to bypass even those few restrictions CONCORD is supposed to abide by? One that has continually sent out fleet after fleet after fleet in Pochven just for them to routinely get wiped out?
I would suggest you at very least listen to the messages Zorya Triglav has so widely distributed throughout the cluster by billboards and semiosis consoles alike. Their only interest is in the stars themselves, the Collective is working on a stellar-based spatial engineering project of untold scale, all while they are being exterminated by Drifter fleets. Had they not been invaded by them I assure you, all hints at their existence we would ever get would be archaic and cryptic references to them and their technology inscribed in ancient databases floating around in deadspace. This is a people that fights for their survival. Their occupation of the planets surrounding their desired stars is a matter of practicality, and the fact that they even bother bioadapting the local populations and ecosystems at large are nothing short of an act of benevolence, for they most certainly do not require them for their task. The loss of life incurred by the war is, of course, unfortunate as always, but the scale of this is far larger than the idyll of some baseliners.