Hi All,

I had to rant. I was playing my first game with the vasari in a three v three and I became the guy who got attacked first by the other three players. It's ok, I fought well, they fought better and soon my three planet empire was down to two. No problem. I had a linar empire (home world)-(asteroid one)-(asteroid two). So I decided to make a stand at asteroid one when asteroid two fell. I had a good economy going so I built my fleet back stronger adn better than before, nearly doubled it in fact! Now as I was churning out my second cap ship I noticed a thing blue line emanating from my former colony on asteroid two. No problem, my allies were preparing a nice housewarming for the new inhabitants of asteroid two.

Together we jumped in. My allies from the side and my fleet from the front. Glorious! My historians were already writing the history of the retaking of asteroid two when.. wtf? Asteroid one flips and joins the enemy! Keep in mind we are bombarding asteroid two which is emitting this influence crap. Bombarding! Sieging!

Ok ok, now my allies are a little worried but give some good advice. Nuke asteroid one and asteroid two and recolonize. My defenses are still in place so I'll be ok. Oh, wait, less than 3 minutes, maybe 4, after asteroid one flips my HOMEWORLD flips. Game over, I loose. WTF. Fix this now. In fact, fix it yesterday. It is a minor annoance that asteroid one flipped, I get it, asteroid mining colony one jump away from the homeworld, middle of a war, being exposed to enemy propaganda. No matter that it is the fracking front line. I'll deal with that switch b/c they had propaganda and I didn't. But my HOMEWORLD? For crying out loud giving up when we are winning the war? That's redonkulous. yes. I said redonkulous.

The So What of my argument:
There needs to be passive counters/resistances to influence. These should be tied to #of capital ships in the system, # of defensive platforms in the system, also planets being bombarded (even if they have propaganda stations or whatever, should not be permitted to increase their propaganda during that time, or it should be reduced. Logically if the citizens of the home world, not mention that of asteroid one (the bastion of defense),were to give up and switch sides they would probably NOT DO IT after 1) Their brothers and sisters on Asteroid Two were nuked to death. 2) The rebuilt fleet (x2 of our first fleet) is 3) nuking the be-jebus out of the murdering theives who colonized asteroid two (and ate the babies of the previous colonists, yes, we vasari do that even to fellow vasari).

Ok rant is over. Just... ugh. Stop with the rampant influence crap. It took the "glorious comeback" out of my game. k.

-JimiSlew