Hello,

I'm playing a game with the Vodyani. I couldn't really figure out how to produce Essence until the Lumeris came and colonized a system nearby. Then I used the a Leecher to abduct Lumerian colonists for Essence and all seemed fine, but I can't share the feeling that there should be some sort of repercursions to this action. I'm producing an absurd amount of Essence per turn now and the Lumerians don't seem to give a flying duck about their people getting abducted.

Is this due to diplomacy still not being very mature at this phase in the game, or is essence gathering simply a passive gimmick with no negative effects?

What are your thoughts?

I had the same loss of immersion when I noticed that my harvesting of essence had no ramifications diplomatically.  Maybe make a post in the ideas section to suggest a way to resolve this conflict?  I imagine there will be plenty of balancing to diplomatic dynamics that occurs in the process of pre-release updates.  Not sure how the devs could do this without it being a massive hindrance to playing as the Vodyani.

I'll repost in that forum. Thanks!

I think I replied in the other forum but I'll also put it here for ref:

Yes this is due to the diplomacy being worked on. We have the system in place for the AI to keep memory of past events (both bad and good), and we're currently working on the system to send feedback messages to players and alter the AI's diplomatic behaviour in consequence of player actions.

Eventually you abducting the AI's people will be seen as a very agressive move and it should let you know about it fairly bluntly :).