The Race invade Pandora

[Ilya Muromets]

The Emperor doesn't commission a Soldier's Time without intent to eventually colonize the planet in question, especially since it'd be a vital staging ground to launch attacks against Earth from. They're going to need to alter the atmospheric content of the planet by introducing a lot of their own flora, and killing anything that tries to throttle it.

They can't, however. The atmosphere is hostile to them, so it would be hostile to all the livestock they like to bring along. Without food stocks or even plant life based on an edible, breathable ecology, I sincerely doubt they'd colonize it for the purposes of living there. At best Atvar has been sent here to establish a permanent mining outpost, but the Race doesn't seem like the type that can actually terraform Pandora's atmosphere nor does it automatically jive that they'd be able to make massive domed cattle ranches for their farm critters.

But doesn't that go against the Race's canonical attitude about colonization? It was explicitly stated that, somewhere down their history, that some Emperor decided that they should spread the peace and order of their civilization to other races. During the Colonization trilogy, when the US got their interplanetary ship going, the Race were baffled at why the humans wanted to check out asteroids or go to Mars as those couldn't support life. They didn't even consider the possibility of mining and minerals, and outright called said asteroids and Mars useless.

The Race has always had three objectives in their colonizations:
1.) establish complete overwhelming military superiority (which is why they carted along tanks, aircraft, and nukes to fight what they thought were sword-swinging primitives)
2.) establish a proper, fully-functional colony after the establishment of military dominance
3.) reeducate and integrate the natives into becoming proper subjects of the Empire

Given how idiotically rigid the Lizards can be about following procedure, I just can't see them forgoing a civilian colony or merely settling for a mining colony and leaving the natives alone. The only reason they didn't completely do the same to Earth was because they never expected to face a planet with the industry and technology to fight back.

[Sarevok]

The race sounds like idiots alright. But they are the idiots with bigger weapons. They can "civilise" the Navi alright if they are more interested in assimilating aliens rather than plundering planets for resources. Their biggest advantage would be the fact they are not bound any of the legalistic mumbo jumbo restrictions RDA faced.