Are hegemony federations completely broken? Members are constantly leaving without permission.

[Zunnoab #931]

Despite it being a hegemony federation with only myself as the leader able to allow members to leave, empires are constantly leaving. Sometimes the message even says I gave them permission when I didn't at all. Sometimes it just says they left, as if that's even supposed to ever happen on its own. I even had the permission window disappear on me while I was reading it once. It sure would be nice to be able to auto-decline that, if allow is inexplicably the default.

Is there some setting I'm missing, or is this feature busted? Are vassals not required to ask permission for some reason? I know the scion origin is a bit broken considering my first war of independence the war goal was something ridiculous like _unknown_goal and I got forced into a status quo and had to wait 10 years to try again.

I am extremely frustrated because I put a ton of work into becoming independent after starting as a fallen empire's scion, with the intent of forming a galactic wide federation.

From the last time I played, I knew that wouldn't be possible with a normal federation so I created a hegemony federation (way later than I intended since I didn't realize I wouldn't be allowed to as a scion). It's been a nightmare. I could turn the galaxy into vassals but then what is the point? Federations are supposed to allow more autonomy than that, even hegemony federations.

And if it is that any vassal, even your own, can just leave without permission I'm not looking forward to a dozen or more wars to force integration to the federation, as members make 15+ claims that make them not surrender despite their entire star force being non-existent for literal years. I think "Starcraft but no gg combined with Where's Waldo" for hours sums up my current game's experience with war pretty well.

I put mid and end game centuries ahead because I knew I wanted this to be a mostly peaceful run, and that worked all the way up until actually trying to make this federation. They did a good job making fun things to do that aren't about conquest, because that's only one part of what 4x is. But this is driving me crazy.

Then there's the insanity of "add to hegemony" wars being at less than -1000 acceptance despite completely obliterating their fleets and easily being able to take planets one by one. Apparently even though the war is specifically to add to the federation you still have to tediously find each and every system allies have claims to and take them all over. Like fighting a player in Starcraft only it's not allowed to declare victory until you hunt down every bit of their units across the map, as they zoom them around everywhere. You should be able to exclude the claims from the war goal, or give some of them up to increase acceptance. But arbitrarily, as so much in this game is, you can't release claims in a war. Thankfully I figured out pressing "F" lets you find star systems, but the war goal screen "helpfully" only lists a couple claims that aren't captured with no easy way to list them all and just click and see what they are, or better highlight them somehow.

I don't hate the game. Influence and sectors aren't (as) arbitrary and un-fun as when I last played, just before they gutted FTL options. And why did they remove rally points? That is insanity. Using a star base to queue up troops scatters them above planets all over the map, then you have to manually select them all and combine?

It's like large maps and more peaceful play is a total afterthought.

Edit:
Oh and planet automation seems useless as I get spammed with notifications about unemployment for planets the automation is leaving almost completely empty. It's like long duration 1000 stars games are an afterthought in how this is designed.

Edit:
This has been going on for at least months:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/stellaris-ai-empires-leaving-hegemony-en-masse-w-o-permission-v3-11-2-5f4a.1629579/

[Revontulet]

Its happening to me to. I also have a post on this, although yours is much better.

[Zunnoab #931]

I forgot to add that it wasn't just subjects like I suspected when I posted that. Any member in the hegemony federation seems to be able to leave at will.

Lucky for me War in Heaven forced them all back in. But I suspect when that's done or even during it, they will start leaving again.

I also didn't realize integration for each vassal is something that would take hundreds of game years in total. I don't feel like spending hours on end warring them to absorb them one by one so I'm just giving up on it for now. Hopefully they fix this, since it's been going on for months from the looks of it.

[Revontulet]

Since I'm dealing with this on a whole play-through I'll tell you some things that have happened to me:

I've had a play-through where the Hegemony worked right -- when my vassals wanted to leave they had to ask for my permission per federation law.

I like playing tall, so I decided this time to release new colonies as vassals as a strategy to take over the votes of the Federation. However the first time I did this the new vassal immediately left the federation. I scum saved and tried switching every possible vassal setting.

Finally, with the expensive Bulwark setting, I got the question when the new vassal wanted immediately to leave.

The first time I tried using the bulwark setting for the vassal it worked -- when they wanted to leave it asked me a question and I was able to deny the request.

Now I had two votes out of the four of us which was still not good enough to control everything. So I tried again -- new colony, new vassal , same problem -- immediate federation exit.

But this time it did not work to make the new vassal a Bulwark. Scum saving nothing would force it to remain.

Lucky the crew was willing to declare war on other new empires and I have two other new vassals that are not trying to leave.

Planets I conquer (as a subsidy of my megacorp) and turn into vassals don't just leave.

Of course I have no idea what's going on. Hope this helps.