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I could have sworn there was such a setting. I must be confusing it with something else. Regardless, there IS the setting Home System Quality. By default, home systems are balanced to be 3-4 planets. But with a chaotic home system quality, you can easily get a 1 planet or a 5 planet system. And all of them can be colonizeable or only one of them with others 4+ researches away.
In the end, what kinds of systems you find is really up to chance. And playing with systems with 1-3 planets is simply a challenge you have to face. As Vodyani especially it is also no problem to anchor on a 1 planet system and move your ark later when you have found more suitable locations.
Turn 30 is very late for starting offensive wars against the AI. You really need to be there on turn 10-15 with battle arks. Also, a single battle ark is probably not going to cut it. In addition to that, remember that upgrades in your ship tech also affect the arks, so they are very important to get as well.
In general, Battle arks only make sense against other empires and are way more powerful early on (before the AI can build medium ships). If you only find minor civs, you basically lost the game already anyway (unless you are on an easy difficulty).
I also tried your method twice:
First on a 8 Arms Spiral Galaxy with a total of 8 Empires, yet by turn ~70, there was no trace of any Minor/Manor Civilizations, so the Battle Ark was just rusting around
On the second try, on a 1vs1 Tiny Map against Lumeris, I found one of its Colonies by turn ~30 and the Battle Ark was destroyed by a 11CP Fleet of Explorers/Attackers
It does make sense (however I think I'm taking it a bit too far by research "All must Provide III") while only acquiring 200 Dust and 50 Influence per turn
Plus refiting a single Ark cost +2.000 Dust which takes me nearly 10 turns to make (and I have 8 Arks by now)
But this is probably my own fault, I don't even know how to acquire Heroes besides the two Vodyani ones I have plus the Endless I got in my Quest
What is truly bitting my head is the "Gameplay Time" Setting and how it strongly affects the Vodyani...
I'm playing on "norma" but is there even a point to set it to "Endless" just to have a 1.800 Essence cost to build my second Ark?
There is a setting for planets per system that can be low, medium, high, random. In the end, it is also just luck. While getting one of these is great, it is not a requirement for a successful strategy. I'd rather have a 3 planet system with 2 or three already colonizable (or like 1 tech away) than a 5 planet system where I can only get one planet for quite some time.
The great thing is, if you find better options for e.g. the capital, just move the Ark there.
In order for an ark to reach full potential, it will need to anchor and complete the system developments. Due to the immense luxury requirements, it might be beneficial to use mining probes on behemoths to mine your system development resources on unclaimed systems. Behemoths can also be used to retrieve essence from systems with destroyed planets. It is also a great income of essence to just nuke a 5 planet system, send an Ark over and have a never-ending, non-diminishing supply of free essence.
By turn 80, you'll have 2-3 fleets entirely made up of arks in addition to a few systems to keep yourself going. From there it is easy to snipe the enemy home systems and win supremacy.
You can always transition to a more economical gameplay and not build too many BARKs, but you should always keep the essence loop going. The higher your essence production, the more arks you churn out on which you can immediately add populations using essence, level up the system development, adding more pops through proliferation eventually to the max. population all in 14 turns - something other factions require a good 60+ turns for.
Invasion is another point where i disagree on. The biggest downside is that Vodyani manpower is very valuable. So you wish not to lose it. The problem with invasions is that enemies tend to draft, which will unnecessarily prolong invasions and kill off your troops. What you can do however as Vodyani is leech the planet dry on pops and then invade using manpower modules & the blitz tactic. Being able to bring 2-3 times the number of troops to a fight than your enemy is an instant 1-turn invasion win, saving you lots of manpower. An added benefit of orbiting and leeching off pops also means you are sieging your enemy.