I've just had an opponent send a sub towards me with a minister of energy as an onboard gift, which I don't want as I need my driller production for the ongoing war!

Is there anyway I can refuse the gift, or get rid of the minister of energy?

You can gift it back.

That's quite an interesting tactic, gifting specialists to hinder rather than help.

Feels like you should be able to 'fire' specialists when you select them--especially for those with a negative associated with them.

Does that mean you could send a sub with a martyr as a gift, followed very closely by multiple groups of 1 sub, so the martyr arrives then combat occurs with the non-gift and nukes the outpost?

If the person was paying attention they could just bail the martyr out of there as soon as they get it. I'd love to see something like that work though.

Maybe if you could stack the two subs close enough the person you're attackinng wouldn't notice.

I just tried the martyr gift with a sub of '1' following it, it does work however, the opponent can indeed redirect the martyr away from an outpost before the sub of '1' arrives thus losing you a martyr.

However, I haven't tried it by synchronizing arrival times between two different sub paths. Granted, by using two different sub paths they can easily send a sub of '1' back along the path it was sent on.

As for the main question, I tried gifting a specialist to myself to see if the global effect would no longer take place and it looks like until the specialist is owned by someone other than you the effect does not wear off.