Can't win vassalization war?

[EmeryWay]

Hey so just checking in on a shitty situation I got myself into on my first Le Guin game. Started a war to vassalize a weaker neighbor, they had some allies but I was able to defeat the allies fleets and occupy their capital system then I occupied every planet, system and destroyed every ship of the neighbor expecting that I would be able to win if I did so. Apparently not though, I am still at -31 warscore because I haven't occupied every inch of their allies territory and planets and because of war exhaustion I have little time to do so.

So basically I'm asking, is this whole war a wash? I mean it has been such a long one that going back and changing my war goals seems almost not worth it, but also continuing having wasted all this economic energy on a fruitless war seems equally pointless. I'm not really pissed but its quite annoying, really thought I was making a big break on this play through and now I feel like I should just step away from Stellaris for a bit. Is there anything I can do to make this war pan out?

 

[SpectralShade]

You discovered one of the issues of vassalization wars. If they have allies, you need to not only beat and control the empire you want to vassalize into a pulp, but you need to do it with their allies as well as it is the combined alliance you are practically fighting against. Take out the fleets and starbases of the allies and hope they got enough you can kill to get a decent warscore.

 

[Promethian]

Actually you are supposed to be able to create a splinter empire from the systems you have occupied during the war. What is supposed to happen is when status quo is declared you'd get your vassal because you have occupied all the target's systems. The reason you can't force surrender is so the allies have the opportunity to repel you if they are capable.

Now I use the turn of phrase "what is supposed to happen" because in the live version and the previous test version this functionality is broken. The war ends and you get nothing. There is a patch note saying this is fixed in the latest version. There have been patch notes in the past saying things have been fixed when they were not. So it might work if you are on test or shift to the test version before finishing the war. However I make no promises.

 

[EmeryWay]

Yeah. Alas what I expected. I went back and tried subjugation because the war score was easier but after after taking all three allies capitals and everything else I could, I still couldn't tip the war score. I think I'm going to take break from stellaris for a sec. This has just been frustrating.