Influence Wars for Minor Factions

Thanks for the update on this idea The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales. It's nice to see the Devs still engaging with the player-base ideas, whether yay or nay, this late in the game's cycle. 

In most cases, I just do as Velorace suggests: fill the really important factions with silly amounts of influence right before 100 to prevent enemy suzerain, and keep other ppl. guessing on how high they would have to go. 

It would be way more engaging if u could for example “protect/guard” them with a fleet, resulting in different rates of influence/ replacing influence with “threat”. That way, players who are behind in influence can park a fleet in orbit to even the playing field OR protect the faction from other empires spending (massive) amounts of influence on them.

• The influence-rich player can boost their economy, while the faction output will decline when under “thread”.
• Influence is effectively replaced with ship upkeep

Appart from this, in the late game I miss an opportunity to spend accumulated influence. I believe I had one game with over a 100.000 influence sitting around, though I must admit I am not big on political spending/ Sometimes there is just not enough for a new law etc. - You can't spend acc. infl. to temporarily support a law

But the most important feature for me would be a way to see other empires progress and avoid pumping factions with unnecessarily huge amounts of influence in early game:

• Since u are “on good terms” after raising to ~50+, u should have some supporters on the surface that inform you of foreign empires actions on the planet.

But i just have one question: When you mean "lets beef it up some" you are trying to say that, it would be better for the game if we could spend unlimited amount of influence on these?

Personally, after thinking a little bit more... i realized influence is a very hard to acquire resource (you have to spend plenty of turns building infraestructures like Denmarque University or influence planetary specializations... or something) and even so you always will have just a little bit of influence, and in the end, you will always struggle to at least have enough influence to praise a certain minor faction. When the game starts, we have around 5 or 7 influence per turn. If you pay attention, before turn 30 on fast mode or 40 most minor factions in the whole game are already assimilated. 

I can't see how we can wage "Influence war" whit minor factions if, 

• After a certain (relatively small) turn treshold most minor factions are already assimilated
• Are we supposed to wage "Influence wars" whit minor factions or simply assimilate them when we can? That part of your idea i haven't understood. This can also make players a little bit dizzy in their empire expansion decision.
• Influence generation is too low for most major factions unless they spend vast amount of turns building influence-type infraestructures, and spend tons of turns researching influence upgrades in Empire and Development screen, Which often is not necessary for certain major factions, like Unfallen, or United Empire, because they have vast influence output and they dont even need to build infraestructures, since guardians yields them more science than almost anything in the entire endless universe.
• Most influence outcome eithers come from A- Influence generation planetary improvements, which may take very long to build and can hinder the war effort of any nation who attempts to build them. Therefore, creating influence wars based on this concept would only make influence Elite wars, since most people won't be able to compete in those wars because they will focus on real wars instead of those, being not good for the balance of the game. Secondly, from B- Unique planets, and since Unique planets are hidden trough the galaxy and unavialiable for most, and finding unique planets is not really a matter of skill, but also of Luck, it can make Influence Wars even more elitist than they currently are. If one major faction finds a unique planet, like Teonha, early in the game... it can easily not only assimilate every major faction, but reap MASSIVE boosts from it, and when people realize the only way to compete whit this major faction is to assimilate their minor factions, its already too late, since it can already have more than twice the score from anyone in the game. And just for you to know, twice the score can mean something like 4x research than half score. And whit research you unlock greater and more powerfull military ships faster so, gg.
• You can also rename influence wars for influence Domination,  since there can't be any real war upon something where one major faction has massive advantage upon, and others have collosal disvantages at the point of relying on either luck or forced  playstyle (building X structure in the middle cauz "I want to compete in influence wars) Only to compete whit something that can be Easily  simplified, and still work, like the current influence not-war  system.
• You can also say something like "Oh but the game itself is a domination and not a war" but srsly,  at least it begins fair for everyone. In the influence "war" concept you create, its only "fair" for unfallen and united empire, since they yield vast influence output, making the game even more balanced than it *currently*  is.
• Instead of people utilizing influence to wage war upon "minor factions", i believe it would be a vast, great, and better idea, to only keep the system as it currently is, since we (or me at least) is always running low on influence, and i always have tons of things i want to make whit influence besides "Overpraising a certain major faction". For example, instead of allowing a in-game feature that increase the amount of influence we can spend on minor factions unlimited, it would be better for me to simply increase my influence output instead of that, since Minor factions are not the only thing we can spend influence upon. we can even wage war whit other major factions utilizing influence and, trust me, being such a scarce resource for SO MANY major factions, i find myself building and researching influence technlogies / improvements just to wage war at a cost against other major factions to expand my empire, so who can say wage war on minor  factions whit a resource scarce like diamonds in space?  i wonder if those even exists...  
• Even whit all these factors, you seemingly forgotten to explain how these "minor faction wars" will be done, and you simply said Lets beef it up some but you din't explained on how this process will be maked, and you left the people to think about themselves how this influence war process would be done, and haven't picked yet any idea that some users gave you to improve your idea. I hope this observation may help you in future ideas :)

Thefore, i liked the concept of your idea, but i view it as unviable whit the following factors stated above, unless you find a way to counter-argument them whit massive and GREAT philsophy! :D