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If you have controlled fusion, or can build kugelblitz black holes, or cheaply transmute elements or efficiently make antimatter, why bother using stars at all? You’re still constrained by thermodynamics which puts limitations on how close you can mash a civilization together and effectively radiate waste heat, so that it resembles a Dyson Swarm, but that doesn’t mean you have to use a big, clumsy and unwieldy natural star if you’ve got better options. Efficiency will matter to them since every bit of wasted energy is someone’s life if you’re trying to stretch civilization out as big as it can go and for as long as it can go. Every star not contained and every galaxy allowed to drift away are potential civilizations that could have been. In this regard, all the stars of this galaxy are an endangered species, dying stars who count their lifetimes in mere millions of years, waiting for us to arrive and repurpose them. Most will probably be destined to either end as the center of a classic Dyson Swarm or as the furnace in the basement of some mega-civilization, or simply disassembled, torn down to a small convective red dwarf or just basic build material.
