Dragar wrote:

Is there even a ground battle when you invade somewhere with zero manpower on the planet? Maybe I am not recalling correctly. 

Yes. You have to always invade a system to get it, even if it is at zero manpower. You're thinking of ES1.

nuclearrussian74 wrote:

Yes, but it's typically not won by the defender. 

Typically yes. Not if your fleet is sitting at 100 manpower of its own because you're a Vodyani who refuses to use essence to manpower conversion. A single conscription will give 200 manpower to the defender, which is twice as much as yours, resulting in am eventual loss. Even if your fleet is sporting a little more manpower than that, if it doesn't win on the first turn of invasion, then you will find yourself outnumbered eventually.

There isn't any exceptions to this. If you don't have a lot of manpower on your fleets, you won't win any ground battles, even with siege fleets in tow. Try it if you like. Get a low manpower Vodyani fleet (easy enough to get - build seven Gouges and don't use any essence to MP), siege a system down to zero, then try any take the system. If the AI uses conscription (as it often does). you will lose - which doubly sucks because you lost even more of a precious resource. The only way the siege alone strategy wins is if the AI derps and plays a different ground tactic, which it very rarely does.

As a side note, the population to manpower use isn't even bad for the other factions. It's a 1:1 conversion of food, which is better than the innate conversion rate of 10%. If you are running low on MP, and one of your systems is running full and at 300 food, then there is no loss at all. If it's any less then that, it's a tit for tat FIDSI loss, but if you need the manpower, then you are gaining something you presumably care about more than the small FIDSI loss.

You can bypass closed borders with Righteous Fury (one aspect that still works).

The advantages are:

First strike - Usually if you see a big old fleet barrelling towards your worlds you can close borders and delay them, and build system defence. Doesn't work with Vodyani, especially as their fleets are so fast. Even a guardian led fleet can be on top of one of your systems before you can react. So it changes the way you have to play vs Vodyani - you have to have defensive fleets in good positions, or you risk losing your systems.

Influence cost - As Dragar says, declaring war costs a chunk of influence. Early game it's a big deal. For Vodyani, saving the influence is a huge deal, as it allows them to keep their laws running, and getting minor faction conversions. You also have to ask yourself if a full declaration is really worth it. You can still use your own fleets to defend the systems. Why bother declaring war if you only really have the ability to defend? Declaring war is only a good idea when you want to be aggressive, not when you have to be defensive. If you do declare war because a Vodyani is attacking your systems, nothing has really changed for them, and the only thing that has really changed for you is that you've lost a chunk of influence.

Summary: Saves influence of declaring war. Saves you the influence bleed of force truces.  Means you can take advantage of defensive fleets being out of position in a way that wouldn't be available to a non-Vodyani. These all sound like little things, but it makes a huge qualitative difference when playing. 

ArkanoTGS wrote:

Someone fill me in here; what's the point of righteous fury? I understand it's effects, but I don't see how they're useful. Won't the enemy that you're invading just declare war?

They could also just shut their borders. Either way, that costs influence. 

Someone fill me in here; what's the point of righteous fury? I understand it's effects, but I don't see how they're useful. Won't the enemy that you're invading just declare war?

WeLoveYou wrote:

Dragar wrote:

Is there even a ground battle when you invade somewhere with zero manpower on the planet? Maybe I am not recalling correctly. 

Yes. You have to always invade a system to get it, even if it is at zero manpower. You're thinking of ES1.

I don't know what I was thinking of, but I was certainly wrong. I could have sworn it worked like that at one point...

Anyway. I'd still adocate sieging down to zero with Voydani. It's better than spending more manpower than necessary!

Suis3i wrote:

WeLoveYou wrote:

FreedomFighterEx wrote:

Darn it. Righteous Fury still bugged? It is been a year now.

It was *briefly* working after release, but the galactic update patch screwed it again. :/

Really ? I haven't encountered any problems with it (though this was a week or two ago)

It's half working. You can attack their ships in their space, and you can ignore closed borders. You can't invade, which was the biggest advantage. I tested this about 2 days ago. It's been like this for a while. The problem is a known one :

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forums/114-bug-reports/threads/28774-vodyani-righteous-fury-law-doesn-t-function?page=1

If the invasion is working for you, could you post a screenshot (maybe to the bug report, not here) as then we'll know that the problem might be at our end.

WeLoveYou wrote:

FreedomFighterEx wrote:

Darn it. Righteous Fury still bugged? It is been a year now.

It was *briefly* working after release, but the galactic update patch screwed it again. :/

Really ? I haven't encountered any problems with it (though this was a week or two ago)

FreedomFighterEx wrote:

Darn it. Righteous Fury still bugged? It is been a year now.

It was *briefly* working after release, but the galactic update patch screwed it again. :/

Darn it. Righteous Fury still bugged? It is been a year now.

samsonazs wrote:

One important thing to remember here when you play Vodyani.

Without a ground battle but after defeating the fleet you can harvest the system using Leachers.

This gives you essense that you can convert to manpower.

I am NOT saying that the faction is balanced and agree that Vodyani need to have manpower bumped in some way.

Having less manpower in ships does sound like a good idea even if that means you have less manpower to invade later on (which actually doesn't matter once your fleet is large enough).

You can compensate for that in early game with invasion modules and leacher ships that don't care about ground defences and still harvest essence.

Also manpower production needs to improve for this faction. Maybe the gain per essense could be increased?

I think that currently the biggest gap in this area is between Vodyani that have biggest problems with manpower and Riftborn that are happy to convert population to manpower and replace then with their own population.

Both of those need to be pulled near the center to be balanced better.

Just to be clear - none of my comments were about game balance, just about utilising the tools available. 

I think Vodyani are pretty strong right now. The lack of manpower tempers the fact that they can field the strongest early game fleets by a mile. If manpower was easy to get hold of, then there would be no reason not to just make a hero led battle Ark ripped with siege and invasion modules ASAP and go wiping out all your neighbours with little course for retribution. Vodyani have been in that state before, when you could get loads of MP from minor factions, and it was way too strong.

The main problem for them right now is the bugged religious force law, which could really do with a change soon. Being able to conduct raids without full on warfare allowed them to keep other factions in check.

One important thing to remember here when you play Vodyani.

Without a ground battle but after defeating the fleet you can harvest the system using Leachers.

This gives you essense that you can convert to manpower.

I am NOT saying that the faction is balanced and agree that Vodyani need to have manpower bumped in some way.

Having less manpower in ships does sound like a good idea even if that means you have less manpower to invade later on (which actually doesn't matter once your fleet is large enough).

You can compensate for that in early game with invasion modules and leacher ships that don't care about ground defences and still harvest essence.

Also manpower production needs to improve for this faction. Maybe the gain per essense could be increased?

I think that currently the biggest gap in this area is between Vodyani that have biggest problems with manpower and Riftborn that are happy to convert population to manpower and replace then with their own population.

Both of those need to be pulled near the center to be balanced better.

I see that each Vodyani is like Capsuleer in Eve Online, since Vodyani use their body, and essences to control the ship, their ship should use fewer crews compare to the other races. This would remedy a problem that their MP gain is bloody slow due to their -50% growth trait. It would make their ship much stronger since fewer crews requirement mean they hit that +20% damage bonus easier. Also, make that this only apply to vanilla Vodyani, so the custom one can't exploit it.

Yes, but it's typically not won by the defender. 

Dragar wrote:

You can just siege all the way down to zero. Vodyani is so crippled by manpower it's probably worth it.

You can siege a system down to zero. Without manpower, it doesn't matter. Conscription gives ~200 manpower per use, and the planetary defense will do damage to your troops. Unless you wipe them on one turn, which is impossible without significant amounts of your own manpower, then they will successfully defend unless, again, you have significant amounts of manpower to overcome the defenses. There is no situation where you can take a half decently defended system where conscription is used as a ground tactic, in which you wipe that system without your own good amount of manpower.

It's all very well FreedomFighterEx saying that converting essence to manpower is "bad", but without a decent amount of manpower on your fleets, you will never take a system even with good siege fleets. As essence MP conversion is virtually the only way to get MP for Vodyani for about half the game, it's a necessary evil.

I'm not saying you shouldn't utilise siege tech as Vodyani. You absolutely should use siege Leechers to avoid taking big losses. But that doesn't negate the need for your own troops, which are 100% necessary to gain any ground.

You can just siege all the way down to zero. Vodyani is so crippled by manpower it's probably worth it.

FreedomFighterEx wrote:

Vodyani does not has abundant or surplus manpower. Trade essences for miniscule MP is horrible choice.

How else are you supposed to get it early game? Even with siege fleets, without a fair bit of manpower you will still lose the ground battles due to conscription and planetary defense buildings. 

Vodyani does not has abundant or surplus manpower. Trade essences for miniscule MP is horrible choice.

FreedomFighterEx wrote:

samsonazs wrote:

It does sound resonable but don't forget that manpower is used for ground battles also.

So I would recommend that manpower production should be a lot bigger for Vodyani to compensate and have them comparable to other factions.

OpExGear exist for that job. Beside, nobody invade a system without bringing a fleet full of siege module. MP is worthless in ground invasion as long as you can vaporize the entire defender MP within 1 turn.

Which costs resources. I'd rather spend a chunk of surplus manpower than a lot of production and titanium. It's only worthless if you disregard using it.

samsonazs wrote:

It does sound resonable but don't forget that manpower is used for ground battles also.

So I would recommend that manpower production should be a lot bigger for Vodyani to compensate and have them comparable to other factions.

OpExGear exist for that job. Beside, nobody invade a system without bringing a fleet full of siege module. MP is worthless in ground invasion as long as you can vaporize the entire defender MP within 1 turn.

It does sound resonable but don't forget that manpower is used for ground battles also.

So I would recommend that manpower production should be a lot bigger for Vodyani to compensate and have them comparable to other factions.