Pejman wrote:

voydani never get buildings from invading, the buildings are bound to the ark not to the system

not all of them, like drone network. there system wide improvements.

Meedoc wrote:

Hello,

We added to the invasion mechanics for the Vodyani: now when they capture a system, it will turn into a "Fields of Devotion" (temporary name). As the turns go by, the system will decay, generating an essence income for the Vodyani empire until the system is completely razed: 1 population / improvement will be destroyed every turn. During the "Fields of Devotion" phase, Vodyani ships will hunt survivors and scavenge the planets to generate Essence. You can either decide to protect your "hunting ground" by attaching your Ark, or leave it. In the second case, it will still generate Essence but anyone can come back to colonize and get the system back, which will destroy your "hunting ground". Moreover, if another Vodyani player attaches an Ark, your "hunting ground" will not be yours anymore. 

Cheers,

That's extremely exciting to hear!

I would like to know more about which update this is planned to come with.

That would be very grim for Captain Harlock.

Voydani could have a pirate theme.

I hope someone mod a captain Harlock reskin :)

TheTakenKing wrote:

Meedoc wrote:

stuff

Wow, that sounds really interesting! When is that change going to be implemented?

So: when you attach an Ark to a conquered system that still has population and infrastructure, what happens to that? The remaining population isn't converted into Vodyani population, right? Does it just become nonfunctional, yet still exist (shadowed out maybe)? I guess that I'm asking how the interface between Vodyani system/population mechanics and standard faction system/population mechanics will work out.

Will the Vodyani generate anything other than Essence as they scavenge a system during the "Fields of Devotion" phase? FIDSI boosts, etc, in a method similar to the Cultists?

Meedoc said the population will decay 1/turn, yielding essence until the system is razed :)

I'm guessing that--as far as other factions go--means the original owners of the system have incentive to hurry and take back the system as quick as possible.

Meedoc wrote:

Hello,

We added to the invasion mechanics for the Vodyani: now when they capture a system, it will turn into a "Fields of Devotion" (temporary name). As the turns go by, the system will decay, generating an essence income for the Vodyani empire until the system is completely razed: 1 population / improvement will be destroyed every turn. During the "Fields of Devotion" phase, Vodyani ships will hunt survivors and scavenge the planets to generate Essence. You can either decide to protect your "hunting ground" by attaching your Ark, or leave it. In the second case, it will still generate Essence but anyone can come back to colonize and get the system back, which will destroy your "hunting ground". Moreover, if another Vodyani player attaches an Ark, your "hunting ground" will not be yours anymore. 

Cheers,

AWESOME MECHANIC.

I gotta say, you knocked it out of the park with the Vodyani, they're such a unique race.

Meedoc wrote:

Hello,

We added to the invasion mechanics for the Vodyani: now when they capture a system, it will turn into a "Fields of Devotion" (temporary name). As the turns go by, the system will decay, generating an essence income for the Vodyani empire until the system is completely razed: 1 population / improvement will be destroyed every turn. During the "Fields of Devotion" phase, Vodyani ships will hunt survivors and scavenge the planets to generate Essence. You can either decide to protect your "hunting ground" by attaching your Ark, or leave it. In the second case, it will still generate Essence but anyone can come back to colonize and get the system back, which will destroy your "hunting ground". Moreover, if another Vodyani player attaches an Ark, your "hunting ground" will not be yours anymore. 

Cheers,

Wow, that sounds really interesting! When is that change going to be implemented?

So: when you attach an Ark to a conquered system that still has population and infrastructure, what happens to that? The remaining population isn't converted into Vodyani population, right? Does it just become nonfunctional, yet still exist (shadowed out maybe)? I guess that I'm asking how the interface between Vodyani system/population mechanics and standard faction system/population mechanics will work out.

Will the Vodyani generate anything other than Essence as they scavenge a system during the "Fields of Devotion" phase? FIDSI boosts, etc, in a method similar to the Cultists?

"I bask in the cries and the pleas of these lower beings, their demise will be our salvation"

#Voydani2016

Hello,

We added to the invasion mechanics for the Vodyani: now when they capture a system, it will turn into a "Fields of Devotion" (temporary name). As the turns go by, the system will decay, generating an essence income for the Vodyani empire until the system is completely razed: 1 population / improvement will be destroyed every turn. During the "Fields of Devotion" phase, Vodyani ships will hunt survivors and scavenge the planets to generate Essence. You can either decide to protect your "hunting ground" by attaching your Ark, or leave it. In the second case, it will still generate Essence but anyone can come back to colonize and get the system back, which will destroy your "hunting ground". Moreover, if another Vodyani player attaches an Ark, your "hunting ground" will not be yours anymore. 

Cheers,

Do Vodyani gain Essence from invasions? If they don't, I think it'd be a cool mechanic to implement. Do bodies need to be alive to give Essence? Even if they do, converting population to Essence (while drastic) would be a nice incentive to throw manpower at a planet. Not sure if they already do this.

The vassal idea is kinda neat, and more in tune with the lore (I guess?). The one loading picture, anyways, that shows the Vodyani lady siphoning Essence from all the humans. Would be a better way of maintaining a steady supply of Essence. Doesn't make sense to destroy your food source (glutton) when Vodyani are punished for doing so in their society.

though the main point of the cultists was having only 1 city while here voydanis have multiple arks (btw did you know having a crashed ark in a system boost this system output even if you are not voydani? found it on the files not sure if it is activated though)

but yeah, they should receive some essence from purging a system (gonna try to find the pop to essence ratio (actually i think they drain food rather than pop, it's just that pop dies out from lack of food)

anyway i'll try to look into how they work this week

Yeah, the Vodyani have problems expanding. But I think that they were designed to 'go tall' in that they have few controlled systems, but an outsized presence on the galactic stage.

In regard to the method by which Vodyani conquer systems:

In Endless Legend, the Cultists faction, which can only ever control one city/region, automatically raze conquered cities, returning the region to a neutral/uncontrolled state. They would gain Industry (and, later, Science) stockpiles for doing so, which could be spent in their city for large, one-time yield boosts.

I can imagine that the Vodyani are going to have a similar ability, and we'll see it either during one of the Updates or on release. The Vodyani are too similar to the Cultists for this not to be a thing.

My expectation is that when the Vodyani capture a system and automatically raze it to the ground, they will gain an Essence boost that scales with the population of the captured system. This will let them benefit in some way from conquest.

Like the Cultists, the Vodyani have a weakness in that they cannot expand through conquest in the traditional manner. But this is a tradeoff they pay for their powerful scorched-earth conquest mechanism. My point is that the Vodyani method of conquering systems shouldn't be seen as a tool for expansion, but as a method of denying resources to your enemies.

voydani never get buildings from invading, the buildings are bound to the ark not to the system

Viomi wrote:

kaydiechii wrote:

after playing several craver and UE games and stomping endless like it's a joke, vodyani feel weak, if anything, by comparison

Agreed. I hear a lot of talk about the Vodyani being overpowered but I don't see it in the game very often. The cravers can churn out better warships faster, and the other races can compete for score.. There isn't a wincon that the Vodyani excels at (yet). Hopefully they'll eventually add some upside to being super influential and having control over your whole population.

Certain things I agree with here: The lack of any other win conditions makes it hard to judge overall balance, as does their lack of individual techs. That said, saying the Cravers are stronger than the Vodyani sounds exceedingly wrong. Cravers are awful to play as, unless you do an extremely specific playstyle. The Vodyani definitely lose steam as a game grows longer and longer, but even then, they can still claim superiority to the Cravers.

The voydani are strong in the midgame , but loose in the endgame alot of power, because they dont take the population, if they conquer a star system. They at least shoud get the building or plus for the ruins.

I think it is possible to adjust the arcs, but its kind a lot of wotk to adjust the blueprint.

kaydiechii wrote:

after playing several craver and UE games and stomping endless like it's a joke, vodyani feel weak, if anything, by comparison

Agreed. I hear a lot of talk about the Vodyani being overpowered but I don't see it in the game very often. The cravers can churn out better warships faster, and the other races can compete for score.. There isn't a wincon that the Vodyani excels at (yet). Hopefully they'll eventually add some upside to being super influential and having control over your whole population.

kaydiechii wrote:

first/second issue: you're intended to be able to leech from assimilated minor faction systems with the vodyani - i saw a post by a dev to confirm this https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/65-general/thread/20754-vodyani-mechanics-not-working-as-expected-brainwashing-minor-faction-essence-collection

this was months ago, so a fix is probally coming late, or never - but that is why there is no way to cop out of assimilation as vodyani, because its not supposed to have anything but massive positive effect on their gameplay, and as it should, their entire culture is built around assimilation of others into their empire.

third: for gameplay balance it's very difficult to have extra defenses ontop of already incredibly powerful arks, i think where they are are fine and its just something that should either be told to the player or should be intuited, since all other things are done by the ark, given the fact that you can move it system to system and keep manpower, improvements, etc. ships also can join their fleet in the mid/late game when you have fleet sizes above 8

and as far as clarity for arks, i 100% agree, but invasions are pretty essential to the balance of the game, and vodyani would be inherently too strong if it was removed, their silly food generation ratios mean that they can generate manpower faster than any other race in the game save maybe UE, so it would be remiss if they did remove MP from vodyani. i like to think of them like a race that gathers essence by having worshippers/slaves, not necissarily harvesting energy from orbit, but going down onto a planet and snatching up subjects to draw from

Yeah, I can agree with most of this. It's just awkward that they can land on your ark without your ark or any of your ships that are also there shooting at them.

Invasions are definitely essential, I just meant moreso that the Vodyani shouldn't invade others if they're leeching from orbit- The ships are the things with essence modules, right? And the picture behind the "All the population has been leeched!" shows them getting sucked up into a ship. Though, I do think it'd be way cooler if the Vodyani were invading and then assimilating people into their faction and then absorbing them, honestly.

There's just got to be some more intuitive, interesting way for the Vodyani to be absorbing people. I'd really like if these changes were made sooner rather than later, so we can give feedback and they can tweak it by release. Otherwise I feel like they're going to implement these changes last second and it's going to end up continuing to be super confusing.

first/second issue: you're intended to be able to leech from assimilated minor faction systems with the vodyani - i saw a post by a dev to confirm this https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/65-general/thread/20754-vodyani-mechanics-not-working-as-expected-brainwashing-minor-faction-essence-collection

this was months ago, so a fix is probally coming late, or never - but that is why there is no way to cop out of assimilation as vodyani, because its not supposed to have anything but massive positive effect on their gameplay, and as it should, their entire culture is built around assimilation of others into their empire.

third: for gameplay balance it's very difficult to have extra defenses ontop of already incredibly powerful arks, i think where they are are fine and its just something that should either be told to the player or should be intuited, since all other things are done by the ark, given the fact that you can move it system to system and keep manpower, improvements, etc. ships also can join their fleet in the mid/late game when you have fleet sizes above 8

and as far as clarity for arks, i 100% agree, but invasions are pretty essential to the balance of the game, and vodyani would be inherently too strong if it was removed, their silly food generation ratios mean that they can generate manpower faster than any other race in the game save maybe UE, so it would be remiss if they did remove MP from vodyani. i like to think of them like a race that gathers essence by having worshippers/slaves, not necissarily harvesting energy from orbit, but going down onto a planet and snatching up subjects to draw from