@CyanoticWasp
Doing interstellar travel and likely having encountered unfriendly civilisations, it would be natural for any deep space ship, even scout ships, to have self defence weapons on board, and given their technological level, even these defensive weapons would have tremendous destructive power. Like phasers and photon torpedoes: installed for self defence, yet perfectly able to completely remove all life off a planet.
”No. They’re here for food, cheap labor, energy or all three, and it’s up to us to see that they don’t get it from us.”
”a voyage of exploration and discovery”
Which is it now? Make up your mind, please.
In the latter case, your approach might work, but if it is the former case, the one you initially assumed, do you really think they would let a few pathetic barbarians stand in the way of conquest? After all the work that went into discovering and analysing the target, a rare life bearing planet? Do you really think the european kingdoms, especially the spaniards, would have stopped their conquest of the americas just because of some resistance by the natives? no, it would have just made them even more brutal in their approach.
And besides, considering the logistics to build a starship and the energy required to traverse the galaxy at FTL, it is fair to assume that they are not in need of energy or cheap labour