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.