The scenario is that church and cloth spawns two fleets of ships somewhere within your constellation, and you have to naturally kill them. Problem with this quest is that it harms your ability to explore as the Vodyani. A simple change to the fleet AI would solve this, by making them never attack you, you have to attack them. Additionally, i would love to see alternative quest arcs to that you could choose. Instead of going military, you could go ecologists, or religious, which forces you to steal a certain amount of essence, say 500? Or perhaps you need to prepare for the future, and thus require you to settle a system with atleast 5 planets.

This wasn't a huge problem for me since I just told my exploration vessels to retreat though it is still an annoyance so early in the game since retreating damages the fleeing vessel.

I like the ideas you put forward though.