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