Hey folks,

I'm trying to invade a system, but I'm getting a cryptic message 'This system cannot be invaded'. I created a post on Reddit and the community is very helpful, but a few persons have suggested this might be a bug, so.. here I am. The situation:

I'm attacking the light blue system called 'Cancer' and as you can see in the screenshot, I can't invade.

Screenshot link - the site won't allow me to upload the screenshot here.

Here's my save file whyohwhycaninotinvade.sav (a few turns early with a pirate fleet on its way to chase my allies out of the target system) 

Some additional information:

• I'm dark blue invading the 'Cancer' system.

• Light blue is the enemy and i'm at war with them.

• There is no cold war status in the galaxy.

• My fleets have max manpower.

• I destroyed all fleets in the system (friend and foe using pirates).

• I left the system, invaded Circini, returned to Cancer and still can't invade it (no other fleets entered the system after I left).

• I'm  at war with everyone in the galaxy that I'm not allied with.

• The Vodyani are allied with light blue, purple is my ally

• I tried disabling all add-ons/expansions

Morkatog wrote:

• I tried disabling all add-ons/expansions

From what I know you can't disable add-ons/expansions in an ongoing game.

I could imagine a cloaked ship/fleet blocks your invasion. Research uncloaking tech to max. level and send a ship equiped with the related module to the system to find out about.

Thanks for your feedback and suggestion Groo! I looked at it, but I assume cloaking related tech is add-on specific? I checked the corresponding Antimatter Channeling tech and my ship layouts and don't see any anti cloacking tech there.

Cloaking technology is coming around with Penumbra DLC.

I did load your save file. You obviously don't have the DLC for cloaking technology activated. I could imagine you have a DLC (my guess is "Dark Matters", perhaps?) activated, what offers a quest rewarding the (AI) player with a cloaked ship - even not having cloaking technology DLC. This is... buggy.

That would indeed explain a lot. In the end I just forced a truce on them with the condition of giving me the planet. Thanks a lot for taking a look :) I'm also going to check out Penumbra; I thought I had all DLC but apparently I'm blind.

Just an update: can confirm you were right Groo: there was a cloaked ship at that location, which after aquiring said planet moved to another system I have seen before I can invade, but now I can't. Seems like quite a dumb bug, but ah well... what can we do?

If I'm not mistaken the last DLC "Dark Matter" is responsible for this. So you could choose to deactivate it for new sessions, to prevent from this kind of bugs - another one  coming along with the DLC is some quest-related systems outside of starlanes are not colonizable anymore...