Yeah, those terraformers vs polyphonics… they both preach reasoning through arguments but resort to name calling 
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Sadly, diplomacy is really lacking atmo.
It’s not so much a system as a series of abstract rules that are begging to be gamed.
I always remember my first playthrough, and how I was trying to avoid committing to any faction in the fear that it might alienate me to the others, because that’s the logical thing to expect. Never mind raiding Havens and murdering their inhabitants…
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Attributing mass murders to communism ideology is no different than saying “Christianity was a murderous ideology because they approved crusades and inquisition”. What looked good in books, in real life was tainted with desire to keep political power at all costs and remove all worthy opponents (speaking of Stalin). Here I tend to agree with the Anu Cult, that the greedy and traitorous human nature was the root of all evil ;).
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Genuine apologies to you for this, your OP was really funny. I was done as of my last reply though, didn’t read Sock’s response 
That guy who did the micdrop is crazy, nuff said.
Anyhoo, it’s not really that hard to get a logical story into an RPG game if you actually got people who think it through alongside with game mechanics.
Lot of this stuff seems to be designed in a way where first they come up with a gameplay element (i.e. factions) or a mechanic (i.e. pandoran evolution) and then they start designing the element and try to bend the story to fit all the while not thinking about the larger gameplay implications.
For a game where Pandorans are the common enemy of everyone, you sure do spend a lot of time fighting anything but Pandorans because lot of the repeatable material/sci/food missions are tied to factions etc.
It wouldn’t be that hard honestly - just design mission templates where you’re meant to do something for factions against the Pandorans (cleanse local area, fight pre-emptively a group of Pandorans by ambushing them etc) and there you go, you’re now fighting pandorans.
But it can’t be done because they also decided that war between factions should be a thing and the point is to make it rather hard for players to try for peaceful co-existence between all factions, so the point is to have faction missions mostly result in negative rep for some faction - at least the recurring ones that aren’t defense missions.
All of this would be, of course, fine, if there was any real depth with this faction stuff. But there’s not. Each faction has its own gear, its own tileset, its own class(es) and it’s own story. You can get all of them regardless of your ties with factions, trading interaction is identical and so forth.
And this is where I enjoy Xenonauts a lot. There’s none of this faction stuff and you really just fight the invading aliens. There’s civilians and as far as they’re concerned, the only reason to ever go out your way to save them is because you really want to save them. The benefit in doing so varies from zero to very little. But they’re still a fun mechanic because they might be useful or alternatively confusing you by opening doors.
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When the Factions go to war, can you stop/win Haven defence missions by paralyzing all attackers?
And does it make any difference reputation-wise?
I would say yes, normally a defence is successful when any attacker is out of combat and that is given when they are all paralysed. I’ve never done this when a faction on war attacks a heaven, but I don’t think that in this case it would be different.
I highly doubt it.
From the view of the attacker it is also not a big difference if their soldiers are dead or paralysed (i.e. in prison by the enemy). You helped the enemy and that is what they don’t like. Humanity has almost no real value in this game, even if it is sometimes emphasized by some characters …
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Sadly so …
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I just lost 12 Rep with NJ for defending af Synedrion Haven they would have wiped.
Still Allied with NJ and now also with Synedrion.
How low can you go, before Allied status is lost?
Technically below 75% and so it is then stated in the diplomatic screen, then you’re down to aligned. But you can already research all things as before, so nothing changed in real. This is somewhat bugged, I guess, or worked as intended, what I will not hope 
Ok.
So I don´t risk sudden War with former Allied as it is.
This system could really need a “realistic” overhaul, but think that has been debated … ;o)