Hi,

You can avoid DoW by hiring some mercenary fleet on the market and putting them on pirates duty. To clean the small fleets that are camping the target system it's working. 

But when the AI start sending big fleets with hero, it'll may be too late to use this tricks. I never saw medium ships to sell in the market but can't say that never happening :)

Oh, I'm sure there's ways to work around the mechanic - I'm just not sure the effect is what's desired. It exposes some conflicting systems when "standard diplomatic status" comes into conflict with "Academy Finale team status." The standard Cold War NCZ shouldn't interfere with the Academy Finale quest - and usually, if cheesing mechanics is the only way to resolve an issue, that's an indication that the issue itself needs to be reworked a little. ;)

I get your point, It was just in case you didn't know about the pirates fleet, cause I thnik excatly like you first time I saw this ;)

Finally, I really liked when that happen to me the first time I've done this quest. I was in a very old alliance with one empire of the other team, so I had to weight what I want, break alliance, start a war (cause any cold war will had lead to peaceful annexion of 3 system of mine, including the one with the academy). So I decided the sneaky approach, to alt my wars against some of ennemy empire in my own team ... personnal taste of course, but I really enjoy it :)