Let's talk about this first. I honestly never expected anyone to say I've been padding lately... To be honest, I hadn't planned to start introducing the Fourth Civilization's current forces so soon in the first place, but you all wanted to see how those forces had developed. Fine, so I wrote it. Then you say I'm padding, and that these introductions should be finished in one or two chapters... Come on, can this stuff be covered in one or two chapters? Unless I just make a list for you—Eriadu: transportation hub, fortress system. Hoth Planet: cultural center, population hub. Umbrella: biotechnology. Tyran Heavy Industries: "StarCraft" technology. Hiigaran Aerospace Group: "Homeworld" technology. Would you be satisfied if I wrote it like that?
Take what I've written over the past few days, condense it into four thousand characters, then read it again and see whether it's even readable. There are still technology introductions, warship introductions, equipment introductions—sure, cram all of that into those four thousand characters. Each entry can have at most a few dozen characters, not one more. Then see how that turns out.
My original intention was to introduce and explain these summary-type things all at once, clearly. Then I won't have to keep bringing them up later. When the plot reaches these companies and planets in the future, if you've forgotten, you can just come back and look through these chapters. It's a long novel, after all, with lots of terms and data. If I went over them every few days, that would be real padding. Then you all kept asking for summaries, so I wrote them. Now that I've written them, you think there's too much. So what am I supposed to write? Wouldn't it be better to keep advancing the plot? Darth Krayt was originally about to