Hello, I have a small question here. I'm playing a serious campaign as the Umbral Choir and as of right now I love hacking, but I have a question regarding food consumption and manpower draining with them.
 How do I manage it? Manpower seems to always be on the negative after 80 turns or so on normal speed, with as much as 7-8 sanctuaries, my pop stop growing and I can't build a fleet eithert because of it.

 Tried every tech on the first 3 eras, none seem to help either and I'm pretty much getting stuck. There's something on the tooltip about Bandwitch influencing it aswell, but on this specific campaign I built transmigration beacons on several special nodes and even without hacking programs my bandwitch is quite high.

 The strange thing is that manpower keeps getting drained even without any ships requiring it and I don't really know where all that resource is going besides generating a huge food defict wich leads to every single pop unit costing 30 turns to grow on the Nexus.

 Can someone give me a light here? Thanks.

Send more sleeper you will see man power gone crazy

You must understand there are bunch of ghost

In case you want to grow pop on Nexus, you should stop supporting sanctuaries to grow faster (to not support chosen sanctuary you can cancel in Nexus system view somewhere to the lower left side).

You don't have to have manpower to build a fleet or settle more sanctuaries.  

Each planet you put a sanctuary on wants 200 manpower though, so I always run short.

Then the reason my manpower is being drained like that is because I have way too many sanctuaries and should slow down on their acquisition? I have 11 i think. At turn 80. 

 I'm spending more food on consumption than I generate, and my manpower is always on negative. 

lots and lots of unallocated bandwith.

Dragar wrote:

Huge food production (which you should have anyway), the manpower production buildings (Patriot Pills etc.), and Chain Gang.

It's simply not enough. Consumption grows and consequently manpower suffers. 

 So apparently there's no solution. The - 75% mpower penalty is too high. Unalocated bandwitch seems counter intuitive to the "hacking race". Hopefully it'll be addressed in a patch. In the meantime I'll wait for a mod I guess. 

Hi,

Out of curiosity, what do you need manpower for in this case?

jhell wrote:

Hi,

Out of curiosity, what do you need manpower for in this case?

I echo that sentiment. As UC, I didn't really need manpower short of manning my ships to the extent possible.

Even if you are to be more militaristic, which I was, the combination of cheap siege vessels (scout hull with all siege modules) summoned on planets, hacking to compromise their planetary defense + supporting manpower from sanctuary should give you more than enough manpower in my experience.

I can see manpower becoming an issue if you're stuck in a long war of attrition but as UC you shouldn't be in that scenario to begin with.

Manpower is a resource used by Sanctuaries, the Nexus and your ships. 

The Nexus and Sanctuaries use it to establish defense against ground invasion (It's the amount of defenders you have in case someone attacks you, the more you have the longer it takes them to siege your Sanctuary or Nexus). 

Your fleet(s) use(s) it to establish an invasion army when you invade a planet. 

You do not have to have Manpower to build Sanctuaries or ships but as long as you have ships or Sancturies that are not at full manpower they will deplete as much of your manpower each turn as they can until they are full (sanctuaries and the Nexus will do this every turn without fail, our ships will replace manpower when they are harbored at a friendly system). 

To increase the rate at which you produce manpower, increase your food production. 

The reason the UC struggle with manpower is because you're not meant to be a military powerhouse, you're meant to operate from the shadows and stay hidden which would eliminate your primary need for manpower. 

SamWAR wrote:

Dragar wrote:

Huge food production (which you should have anyway), the manpower production buildings (Patriot Pills etc.), and Chain Gang.

It's simply not enough. Consumption grows and consequently manpower suffers. 

 

 So apparently there's no solution. The - 75% mpower penalty is too high. Unalocated bandwitch seems counter intuitive to the "hacking race". Hopefully it'll be addressed in a patch. In the meantime I'll wait for a mod I guess. 

The -75% manpower reduction is intentional and does not need to be changed. The Umbral Choir is not a military powerhouse (which is what your manpower is for), they work in the shadows through hacking (espionage), subterfuge and deception. The lack of manpower is to emphasize this fact. 

Spread your Sanctuaries out as quickly as you can and don't worry about the low manpower, continue to produce food production and your sanctuaries will fill up with manpower as the game progresses. They're hidden anyway so they shouldn't be getting attacked very early so the manpower to defend them isn't necessary. Your fleets are also cloaked and shouldn't require a lot of manpower for ground invasions since you can decloak and then besiege for a few turns while hacking the system, use the detrimental ground result (Jam Commands) and invade with almost no resistance. 

Find ways to operate without military brute force, that's the point of the Umbral Choir. If you want to play a manpower heavy military force then try the Cravers, Unfallen, Hissho, United Empire or other military capable faction. 

jhell wrote:

Hi,

Out of curiosity, what do you need manpower for in this case?

I'm not really worried about manpower itself, but for whatever reason my save game keeps trying to replenish manpower and consumption is extremely high. That makes every pop unit spend 20+ turns and I'm stuck without any growth whatsoever. I assumed that happened because the game is trying to spend everything on manpower. Am I wrong? Is there other reason? Would you like to check the Save game? 

Manpower production is a percentage of your Food production (I believe it's 10%), this does not change unless you build certain improvements or technologies. Your Food production is always 10% Manpower, 90% split between consumption of current population and the remainder toward population growth. 

To produce more Manpower increase your Food production, this will increase both your Manpower production and the rate at which you produce another population unit. When you gain a new population, your rate of growth will slow (due to more consumption) but your rate of Manpower production will remain the same because it's based on your Food production not your consumption. 

I'd be happy to check the save game for you and give you a more detailed explanation of what's happening. 

There's also the trait that give MP from unused Bandwith. Try to have BW at max and cancel whatever program, BD or beacon you don't need in case you're short of MP.

After I get rolling, food can crank out 20+ pop a turn.  I usually have a TON of bandwith I don't use either at this point.  I still don't come close to having enough manpower to fill my sanctuaries and ships even without a fight.  I see it as the weak point of the UC, and I think it is great.

That said, I wouldn't mind seeing an increase in manpower production from system development.  If I remember correctly, dark glitter gives +10 manpower per turn.  That always seemed like a joke to me.  Who wouldn't take an increase in production over that.  Well...the UC would probably rather have dark glitter for the 2nd or 3rd upgrade if that number was increased a bit.

I agree, it's a good weakness because it emphasizes their preference to stay in the shadows and work in other ways than military. 

You can build several system improvements to increase your manpower production but their affect is minimal on the UC because you have a straight -75% reduction in manpower production so the little percentage bonuses you can get from system improvements don't amount to much.

Alright then, If I understand this correctly, the real reason behind my problems isn't manpower then. I'll attach the save, hopefully someone can figure it out. My pop is stuck, on this save it's 14 turns/each but It was quite higher a few turns ago. Mankind is totally stuck at 0.

 I apreciate any explanation, I cant understand this for the life of me. WHATS STOPING MY GROWTH.sav