Yes, like the title said, it's peaceful conversion, but with vodyani it seems like kicking other races off the planet.

Also that the arcs get destroyed the other way around is unpeaceful.

That being said, Peaceful conversion means your culturel and religious influence is so great that you can take over other planets. Since vodyani are extremely religious it makes sense that they could brainwash people in their influence zone to commit mass suicide. Kinda like these religious cults that believe they need to kill themselves to get on a spaceship. 

Now, the other way around makes no sense.

Okay you can influence vodyani since the international trade market can be built on an arc, meaning there're clearly non vodyanis living on the arc and vodyanis are suspect to other cultures, but there's no way the leading officer will say, hey let's overload our anti proton reactor core to please the sophons. It's more likely that the vodyani will abandon their arc and land on the planet like sophons.

Hopefully this isn't too off topic, but isn't it also weird that the population is so pissed off after they voluntarily joined your empire?

Isn't the whole point that they are so enamored with you that they disavow their previous allegiance? Why do you still have to get over an ownership penalty?

I was not aware vodyani even had the option to peacfully convert races in their influence? I've not seen it listed under the SLC research atleast? I always thought this was intentional since it seems quite OP to simply be able to move your main ark with its huge sphere of influence around the map where ever you want to convert systems. Have I been missing something?

That being said, it does seem silly that your ark gets destroyed when captured. But it from a dev/game mechanic perspective its probably the easiest solution given how Vodyani systems work. Think about it... they automatically colonize whatever planets they have tech for. What would happen if you "convert" the ark but dont have the tech for that planet? Even further, vodyani dont have any population other than themselves and spread across planets. It wouldnt make any sense for the converting race to inherent these traits. It would certaintly be OP if you could steal the ark itself which is the only thing that would make this make sense. Conversely it would also be OP if the ark were simply immune to conversion. So with all of that in mind what other option is there besides destroying it?

I hear you that it doesnt make alot of sense lore wise, but what other option is there?

The Vodyani would rather burn their ark to the ground than see it turned over to infidels.

When it looks like the ark might rebel and switch alligience the commander of the ark scuttles the ship instead. In the hopes that they might destroy the rogue population and reclaim the ark at a later time

Macitar wrote:

The Vodyani would rather burn their ark to the ground than see it turned over to infidels.

When it looks like the ark might rebel and switch alligience the commander of the ark scuttles the ship instead. In the hopes that they might destroy the rogue population and reclaim the ark at a later time

That also seems rather clumsy and difficult to relay to players in-game.

Macitar's idea is great, but there's still one issue, you can always unplug your arcs and move to an area with other influences or no influences.

That also seems kinda unimmersive since the influence is gone then.

Having 'retreat' might actually be more immersive, but makes the effect worth much less.

Why you are destroying arks:

A) Arks are only available to shipbound factions, giving them to everyone would be gamebreaking.

B) You get a +25 fids boost per destroyed ark on system so theres that

I don't see any issue with this, it makes sense to me.  Just because the one faction is peacefully subverting young and naive Vodyani individuals doesn't mean the Vodyani leadership on the ark is falling for it.  So their reaction is to sacrifice the traitorous heathens before they mutiny, yes.  I agree it would be nice if there were a better way to communicate this to the player ahead of time but I don't have any ideas.

Yeah that doesn't make sense. The mechanic needs to be reworked. The most logical solution would be to let other factions get control of the Ark through conversion.

Since Vodyani can just fly away in the Arc then it would be logical to notify a Vodyani player whose system is about to be taken over that he can choose to stay and in case of rebelion the Arc autodestruction protocol will destroy it to prevent it getting into enemy hands.

Or leave the system outside of enemy influence zone.

One problem with that is the way peacefull conversion works.

As soon as a system is in my influence zone I can just pay influence and take control. No need to wait any number of turns.

I would change that and enable peacefull conversion to be possible only once you cross the 50% ownership threshold.

Why not just have the Vodyani systems be unable to be peacefully converted? Fits the lore since they are zealots, no arc destruction, and no hassle.

Carriontrooper wrote:

Why not just have the Vodyani systems be unable to be peacefully converted? Fits the lore since they are zealots, no arc destruction, and no hassle.

That does make some sense.

Specially since they are closed off from other populations. You don't have any minor factions or any other factions living with them on the Arcs.

Logically, it should evict the Ark, because to my knowledge Arks cannot anchor in other peoples territory anyways, so this would show the peaceful players people convincing the local Vodyani to please leave the premises and not threaten their lands, and the local Vodyani willingly agreeing to do so.