It is a shame that the game quickly loses minor factions as they get assimilated it would be better if those would be present until late game.

The thing is that it is better to assimilate a minor faction then to have it as an ally. Not to mention that if you keep them as an ally you never know at what moment some other faction will assimilate them.

To do that I would suggest those things:

 - remove the assimilation quests

 - assimilation available only trough conquest or having "Cultural Flexibility" tech and absorbing the planet using influence once your influence zone reaches it.

 - expand interraction with minor faction so that it has significance during the game

This means that "ownership" or rather the alliance of a minor faction may change multiple times during the game and only during late game you will be able to assimilate them for good.

Maybe even a minor faction could be alligned with multiple factions?

You will still be able to get their minor faction trait using "Development grants".

Also the interraction screen should be expanded so that you can see other factions relationship with the minor faction and spend influence to try to counter it.

Created this IDEA for it.

This is what I've been saying since the begining of Early Access, so I definitely voted for your idea!

One suggestion I would make;

While I definitely agree about droping the assimilation quests, I would repurpose them into timed quests that the minor faction periodically offers the players that give unique rewards and an increase in faction standing. They would behave like the Competetive Group quests, so multiple empires can participate, but only one will "win" the quest. Quests aren't available all the time and may require a minimum faction standing to actually participate in, so it will makes them something a little more special than they are now.

I think this would give minor factions a bit more flavor, and make competing for their favor more interesting than just spamming influcence until you can complete an easy quest.

Somewhat releated, I would love the see the Minor Faction Diplomacy screens be redesigned to match the look of the Pirate Diplomacy screens, they contain the same information for the most part, but there is so much more personality on the Pirate Diplomacy screen, the Minor Faction Diplomacy screens feel dead.

j

The quest suggestion sounds great.

Rewards could be anything from getting ships / resources all the way to getting the minor faction affiliation for a number of turns.

With the expansion of interraction with minor faction I had in mind something like the Pirate diplomacy screen.

The option to gift ships for defence of the minor faction system should also be possible.

I added redoing the Minor Faction Diplomacy Screen to match the Pirate Diplomacy screen to the Ideas page:

REDO MINOR FACTION DIPLOMACY SCREEN TO MATCH THE PIRATE DIPLOMACY SCREEN

Something similar to the way that Civ5 did city-states would be an excellent method of preserving the importance of minor factions throughout the game, and could create a whole subgame of itself. If anyone is unfamiliar, city-states are like minor factions (they don't expand, but they improve as time goes on, especially in regards to tech and military) that grant bonuses for nations that possess a positive relationship with them. Alliance grants strong bonuses, resource access, and military aid; they are also necessary for diplomatic victory. Conquering them provides major diplomatic penalties with other nations, so for the most part they stay sovereign for the entire game, with relatively stable relationships that are still subject to sudden reversals.

 Overall it is a well designed system, and could with a few tweaks be ported over to ES2 fairly successfully.

I think Civilization VI did a really good job dealing with Minor Faction (City State) favor by creating the Envoy mechanic. You would generate an Envoy after reaching a certain number of points, which you could then send to a City State to raise their favor with you. It allowed more interesting competition between Major Factions when seeking the favor of City States, and forced the player to use thier envoys intelligently and focus on the City States they truely wanted as opposed to just spamming every City State they encountered.