You want to avoid other players knowing where your home system is as that will allow them to invade or hack you. If you move your home system to an isolated special node, it will be much harder for other empires to reach you.

Haven t. used it so far, it is more of a last resort move for me.

Allow me to offer a few clarifications about the Transmigration Beacon mechanic:

• When you place a Transmigration Beacon, you receive the special node bonus on your home system.
• However, your home system does not receive the bonus of the node it is located in. This probably explains your problem of making less Dust.
• When you move your home system, all Transmigration Beacons will be cancelled. This means you cn potentially lose a number of FIDSI bonuses on your home system until you place new Transmigration Beacons, which probably explains your loss of Industry.
• If your home system had been discovered by an enemy empire, using a Transmigration Beacon will re-establish your cloak.

I hope this information helps shed some light on what was going on in your game.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

Allow me to offer a few clarifications about the Transmigration Beacon mechanic:

• When you place a Transmigration Beacon, you receive the special node bonus on your home system.
• However, your home system does not receive the bonus of the node it is located in. This probably explains your problem of making less Dust.
• When you move your home system, all Transmigration Beacons will be cancelled. This means you cn potentially lose a number of FIDSI bonuses on your home system until you place new Transmigration Beacons, which probably explains your loss of Industry.
• If your home system had been discovered by an enemy empire, using a Transmigration Beacon will re-establish your cloak.

I hope this information helps shed some light on what was going on in your game.

This was very helpful! Thank you! I was wondering how you "acquired" special nodes as the UC.

A big reason to move is being in someone else's sphere of influence.  The Umbral Choir are immune to influence conversion, but it's a major hit to your resources.

One thing I would like to know is what determines the debuff period after a move - in a late game I'm looking at 95 turns of a 50% bandwidth nerf. Seems a bit excessive of a duration to be honest :)

Question to devs - should it be possible to hack/translocate to the Regeneration Field node? I was unable to hack it to install a beacon - so bug or feature?

In my game, I moved 3 times each time to put myself close to an enemy capital so I can hack spam it before the inevital mass abduct / purge.

It wasn't necessary strictly speaking but it provided me with better hacking opportunities and angles than my previous position.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

The Regeneration Field is intentionally not inhabitable, as far as I know. However, the Bandwidth penalty is definitelyt not supposed to last 95 turns. Could you share your save of that so we can look into what is happening?

Thank you for the clarification on the Reg. Field. The save is below, let me know if you want me to upload somewhere else as well.

UC.sav

KnightofPhoenix wrote:

In my game, I moved 3 times each time to put myself close to an enemy capital so I can hack spam it before the inevital mass abduct / purge.

It wasn't necessary strictly speaking but it provided me with better hacking opportunities and angles than my previous position.

Are hack operations from the UC capital more efficient?

n

Sotnik wrote:

KnightofPhoenix wrote:

In my game, I moved 3 times each time to put myself close to an enemy capital so I can hack spam it before the inevital mass abduct / purge.

It wasn't necessary strictly speaking but it provided me with better hacking opportunities and angles than my previous position.

Are hack operations from the UC capital more efficient?

No, but it does simply offer a point of origin/proxy where needed.
However I would strongly advise against hacking from your home system as that is the only system enemy can blackout =D

And a traced hack will expose the location of your capital...

I can also confirm the exteremly long bandwith penalty bug. I migrated once and it stuck around with me until the end of the game. I looked at the tooltip and it said the next one would last 140+ turns.

Was the game speed endless?  I got a 50 turn penalty in a normal speed game.  Perhaps that's the equivalent of a 140 turn in endless.

I had an 89 turn wait somewhere around turn 120 on normal speed.  The only reason I moved was because of all the FIDSI losses after being in another empire's influence.

gkaytaz wrote:

Was the game speed endless?  I got a 50 turn penalty in a normal speed game.  Perhaps that's the equivalent of a 140 turn in endless.

It was normal game speed. I have no idea what cranked the value so high. My first migration was because pirates found my home system (seriously why do they always get nice anti-cloaking as soon as it exists) and that one only lasted 20 turns. The second one was to escape a hostile influence zone, and that one lasted... over 150 turns. Not sure exactly how long, the game ended before it wore off. There wasn't anything telling me the time left, but the migration button told me the next one would last quite a while.

Overkill wrote:

gkaytaz wrote:

Was the game speed endless?  I got a 50 turn penalty in a normal speed game.  Perhaps that's the equivalent of a 140 turn in endless.

It was normal game speed. I have no idea what cranked the value so high. My first migration was because pirates found my home system (seriously why do they always get nice anti-cloaking as soon as it exists) and that one only lasted 20 turns. The second one was to escape a hostile influence zone, and that one lasted... over 150 turns. Not sure exactly how long, the game ended before it wore off. There wasn't anything telling me the time left, but the migration button told me the next one would last quite a while.

I believe it is currently a bug, not sure if it has been reported, but the UC's home system can not be converted from influence. So that move was not needed. I think that moving from early major faction detection is good, but pirates it is probably easier to just eliminate close pirate liars to you if you can. That being said I do think it is odd that the pirates have all of this annoying tech that gets in the way of UC.

I think that if someone finds it, it gets decloaked for all to see. Which, if true, is dumb. I would like an alert above the homesystem that says it's exposed if that's the case. Granted, this is based of off anecdotal experience, since once the pirate base that spawned near my system found me the hisso started trying to hack my home system.

Also, I think the system is listed in the market if the Umbral Choir manages to build the trade clearing bureau. Which is also dumb, but slightly more understandable.

If a major empire finds your home system or one of your Sanctuaries, only that major empire will know where your home system or Sanctuary is. If you go to the system screen, you will find a cloaking icon in the top left that shows you in its tooltip who has discovered this system.

Having finished my first playthrough, I agree that moving the Nexus is more situational than not. Only 2 scenarios I can think of are escaping enemy detection and to a lesser extent opening new angles for hacking.

It doesn't help that all special node beacons are removed either - would be better if they just reset.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

If a major empire finds your home system or one of your Sanctuaries, only that major empire will know where your home system or Sanctuary is. If you go to the system screen, you will find a cloaking icon in the top left that shows you in its tooltip who has discovered this system.

...which means I wasn't being sneaky as I thought. Darn.

I find it extremely unfair that the node - let's say Black Hole with its +50 science bonus - that your Home system is orbiting IS NOT COUNTED IN. Many players, myself included, try/tried finding nodes they want to transfer to with a major (if not sole) reason being to have this node's bonuses DIRECTLY (without using bandwith in early game).

Is there any chance that this would be supplemented in future patches or was ist deliberate?

Letting the node's bonuses count from your starting system would make the UC incredibly swingy.  For the sake of balance, I think it is great the way it is.  If you really want a bonus from a particular node, just move somewhere else and then hack the one you were on.

The more you play the UC and the more familiar you become with how they work, the more you'll realize the starting node isn't that important. The UC is more than capable of building up whatever FIDSI they want based on their sanctuary expansion and whatever special nodes they decide to put beacons on. You don't need to waste the time and resources to relocate in nearly any case. 

My latest game I made it nearly 200 turns without any formal diplomatic contact (Unrelated suggestion: add a mechanic that allows players to complete the academy quest anonymously). Had to move out of a hostile influence zone, it was wrecking my resource output. You do want to move if it's getting attacked, that system is your entire empire.

The hardest part about keeping it hidden is the pirates, they seem to magically know where it's located and will start hacking you asap. Putting up a defensive program however will tip off any human players hacking though the node that something is amiss (and humans are much more likely to take proactive measures to deal with the choir before they become troublesome).

Capitalizing on Overkill's points: 

Yes, you'll want to get out of influence zones or move if you're being attacked. Don't waste your time defending because every turn you're defending the system is a turn that other players are going to catch on to where you are. Just pack up and move. 

Also, for the pirates I've found the best thing to do is put a Sanctuary between you and them and put a defensive program on that sanctuary. I'd rather lose a Sanctuary because it's spotted than have my home system detected. 

Pirates are a true headache for the UC. I had to relocate often to a distant system because of them.  New update is supposed to address that issue. I have yet to test it fully.

However with problematic non-pirate neighbors I have played a gamble or two by trying and toppling their government. Did not always work but when it did, it was a game changer. Making an aggressive empire pacifist or a pacifist one militarist jumbles up everything nicely. Enables me to avoid enemy influence problems too.

To me playing as the UC is mostly about creating confusion and unrest as long as I manage to remain mostly undetected. At least at normal difficulty that is.

gkaytaz wrote:

Pirates are a true headache for the UC. I had to relocate often to a distant system because of them.  New update is supposed to address that issue. I have yet to test it fully.

Wait they changed that? In the game I played yesterday, they had the best anti-cloaking tech the moment someone researched cloaking. Made it pretty easy to tell privateers from pirates too.

Patch 1.4.3 beta changes a few things. You can find out more about it under the forum thread titled Endless Space 2: Penumbra Improvements.

Overkill wrote:

gkaytaz wrote:

Pirates are a true headache for the UC. I had to relocate often to a distant system because of them.  New update is supposed to address that issue. I have yet to test it fully.

Wait they changed that? In the game I played yesterday, they had the best anti-cloaking tech the moment someone researched cloaking. Made it pretty easy to tell privateers from pirates too.

The only thing they changed was that Pirates and Minor Factions (Minor Factions moreso than Pirates) don't put up hacking defenses quite so quickly so they're a little more vulnerable to hacking early game, allowing you to set up backdoors and get established before they start blocking you. 

I'm not familiar with most game speeds other than Normal but on Normal the Pirate Faction develops level 1 anti-cloaking at turn 40, level 2 at turn 65 and level 3 at turn 80. 

A little more than that actually. Hacking/tracing speed of MF and Pirates is now connected to difficulty level as well. I played only one game so far with 1.4.3, therefore am not in a position to write a healthy review yet.