i tried a Vodyani game last night. One thing the ship maintenance change does is hurt the already weak Vodyani early game.

As well as being more dependent on ships (leechers), unlike the other factions they can't spread out quickly to acquire resources for an inflation-growing income stream. If they are to pay for Ark upgrades, they're forced into building dust buildings that rapidly depreciate in value.

Hey guys, I forgot I had made a small collection of the UE Quest bonuses. This makes it easy to see the specific quest bonuses. I haven't edited the new values from the g2g patch: 

Figure 1)

Figure 2)

I think this makes it a lot easier to compare the Quest rewards. I would like to reiterate my point on why I think staying United Empire is still not competitive. The new g2g balance updates to Sheredyn and Mezari are a step into the right direction. However, its easy to see that silken diplomacy is nowhere near as strong as the sheredyn or mezari rewards. 

As I have said, I would rather have a flat 10% boost to industry for staying UE instead of silken diplomacy, and move silken diplomacy reward to the first chapter for the Faction Questline, which would replace the "Traitor's reach" Quest reward. A rewards that is quite underwhelming, considering you rather get 10 curiosities researched quickly and get +40% food output on outposts. Again I want you guys to remember that the militaristic choice makes you stockpile 800 manpower on your empire, something that is impossible to do in the earlygame, since your manpower will keep getting drained by building ships and colonizing new systems. It is therefore not a viable choice since you progress way too slow through the faction Quest. In the past, I suggested a different Quest ojective: Raise maximum manpower on empire to X. This would only force you to reach a certain military technology era, quite easy to do earlygame. A simple fix that could be implemented right away. I don't know the numbers from the top of my head, but you could make it so that by reaching the 3rd military era throug researching 1 military tech from the 1st and 2 from the 2nd, you complete the Quest.

Back to talking about population bonuses:

I think the mezari are in a good spot right now. Lets look at Sheredyn, which I haven't talked about a lot. Their population bonuses include 15% manpower capacity on systems for 20 sheredyn. A fitting bonus. However, lets look at the 50 population bonus: +15% Manpower Reserves on Empire. This bonus, like their faction trait is not very impactful.

Together with their faction trait, the UE gain a +40% Manpower capacity on Empire. Sounds like a lot, but what does this actually do? It doesn't help when you are constantly building ships or invading, since your manpower will most likely not be at max value. This is only useful when you are banking up manpower, which usually happens when you are not at war. But then again, the Sheredyn are focused around War. They want to be at war and make use of their -20% ship cost reduction. You are simply not going to be at max manpower capacity for most of the game, and if you are, you are doing it wrong. This bonus is counter-intuitive.

Therefore I suggest the following: 

Change the 50 pop collection bonus for Sheredyn to this: Gain 5 Influence output on systems per 100 Manpower defense on system. With a small, unupgraded system with 200 manpower, this would yield 10 flat influence. But since Sheredyn grant manpower defense bonus as their population bonus and % bonus, you can get a very strong system defense and get extra influence out of it! Investing into system defense will now be a great choice for extra influence and fits their theme!

Lets look at the United Empire population bonus again. As you can read in my earlier post, I have already explained why the 50 pop collection bonus for United Empire is basically useless for most of the game and not comparable to other population bonuses.  

For the sake of having info and suggestions together, I will repeat my suggestion again:

Change the 50 population bonus for UE to grant 0,1 Influence per 100 Industry output. This will make your faction trait twice as effective, but only if you choose to stay as United Empire. Coupled with a flat 10% industry bonus as reward for staying as United Empire, this will now be a viable choice and seperate the UE as the true Industrialist choice. 

Lastly, I want to suggest to improve the wonder "Mountain of Zelevas", a UE only special construction:

As we can see, the maximum output is 400 industry from level 4 system and 320 Influence from level 4 system plus and additional 5 flat industry per different population type. 

I suggest a small change, instead of gaining 5 flat industry per population type on system, gain a 2% industry bonus per population type. So with 5 different kinds of population, you would gain 10% increased industry output on your system. This fits well with the UE theme, as it is supposed to be a multicultural society.

I hope you like my suggestions. They were heavily influenced by Aitarus "politics rework" mod which I thoroughly tested myself and I was very happy with how the changes to faction Quest rewards allowed staying as UE to be a viable choice.

Have a nice weekend! 

gain I want you guys to remember that the militaristic choice makes you stockpile 800 manpower on your empire, something that is impossible to do in the earlygame, since your manpower will keep getting drained by building ships and colonizing new systems. It is therefore not a viable choice since you progress way too slow through the faction Quest. In the past, I suggested a different Quest ojective: Raise maximum manpower on empire to X. This would only force you to reach a certain military technology era, quite easy to do earlygame. A simple fix that could be implemented right away.

This, please. I always wanted to try this but it is IMPOSSIBRU.

Also on the topic of AI changes:

While I do think criticism is justified and changes to AI are always appreciated, I don't see why you don't simply improve the AI cheats until your better solution is in play. How about you simply give Unfallen, Vodyani and Hissho Ai even more cheats than for other factions? And when you are happy with the better Ai, you can simply remove them again. 

When we are talking about balance changes, of course we have singleplayers and multiplayers in mind. I am all for min/maxing and playing the optimal way. Other players may enjoy a different approach, and thats fine. This is why I urgedyou guys to implement the changes about United Empire and Horatio. I want an even playing field for all factions.

Thats why I want these stupid juggernaut modules for Cravers and Riftborn removed. I know I am not the only one who has complained several times about the existence/balance of these modules. And they do affect single players as much as multiplayers. When you have your favourite faction you want it to be atleast comparable in strength to another faction. But when you see these kinds of modules you ask yourself "Why don't I just play Cravers, get these modules and win every battle?" "Why does my favourite factions not have comparable modules, why does one faction get so much better things?"

I will continue to happily give my suggestions to hope to change the game for the better, but additions like these juggernaut modules after many people have complained about them are a HUGE step back toward making this game more enjoyable for everybody. 

I'm trying to give feedback via genuine game examples, so that the developers can see what above average, but by no means top-tier, players are doing. 

Here's a typical Vodyani game. (I'm not going to talk about the micro required to keep Arks up-to-date, except to say that making them as a selectable class at least allows the player to decide how much micro they are willing to endure. Also, you can't delete the designs - well done on catching that!)

Turn 1:

This is a very poor start:

Drone Networks to start, and then another Wheel or two to deal with the incoming pirates. We need to find 270 dust (+inflation costs) as fast as possible to upgrade our ark for the extra 10 essence per turn. This is more valuable than anything else in the early game.

Next door I find a minor race (hurrah!) and my leechers are sent out to begin harvestig. It won't be enough to sustain us for long, so I will have to consider moving on if I find fresh worlds. 

Another system has precious resources - Titanium and Dust Trees - that are easily accessible. They are worth a lot on the market, and the main priority is going to be get those accessible. That means I need to research Med and Savanah  colonization fast. But for now I research N-Way fusion, to upgrade my weapons.

Turn 6: Disaster strikes. The Quest Pirates spawn right on top of the minor system, forcing a retreat. I'm going to have to amass 2-3 Wheels, plus the Hero, to deal with them. Alternatively, an Ark will be ready in a few turns and that might be enough.

I find the Science from Scrap card, and note that it's surpassed hugely by Take Trophies, unless I wanted to go very short range for some reason. I won't be for a while: flak keeps missiles off me, and a second gun as laser after tier 1 military has finished means I want to engage at medium against beams (this is the dominant strategy/Nash Equilibrium of lasers vs beams: lasers always pick medium, beams pick short, by the way.) 

Incidentally, this is map generation property that is just weird:

I'm now way, way behind due to that pirate spawn. An Ark will be ready next turn, and that with my hero should be enough to clear pirates and get back to leeching. Then it can head to Ying and settle that system.

Incidentally, here's how inflation makes things worse for Vodyani - they do a lot more upgrades than anyone else, have dust production slowly depreciating on their population, and have slower expansion reducing their inflation-linked resource accumulation. By turn 17, that Ark upgrade - that I still haven't managed - once cost 270 dust, and now costs 348. Or to put it another way, it once took 54 turns for a Vodyani pop's dust production to pay for that upgrade - it now takes 70.

Finally, a point on early-game weapon balance. The tier 2 laser is strictly better than the tier 1 beam available (24 vs 9 damage - even at their worst range (50% accuracy) the lasers do more damage). That makes no choice at all. This isn't great. 

-----------------

Some final thougts on the first twenty turns. Vodyani are very swingy because:

a)  1-3 planets in starting system can be colonizable (or not) right from the start.

b) Minors nearby (or not).

c) Pirate spawn locations.

These can be fixed. The first by adjusting the system spawning rules. The second - well, that's harder. But the third simply by making leech modules grant essence for CP destroyed. This would make pirates a source of essence, mitigating their huge problems with clearing pirate lairs due to manpower. I really think this change would help them a ton.

I posted that a while back. It's even on the steam discussions. Took them a month and a half to make 6-7 value changes? The last patch was a huge disappointment . 

I have 7 rl friends I got into this game and we have all been playing/testing on this G2G mod. Waited a month and a half for a "we'll just revert the riftborn pop exploit and make a couple value changes." I guess the science agreement change was actually a step in the right direction. 

I have to say base game has a lot that needs fixing before you start working on Spy faction Ai. Not sure if working on Endless Legend again or Segan has you guys working on Warhammer.

Hello everyone,

Once again, thanks a lot for you feedback.  We've pushed a new version of the Balance Mod a bit earlier and you should be able to use it from now on.  The following changes were implemented:

- Mount of Zelevas will now grant +2% industry on system per pop type in empire in addition to its other bonuses
- United Empire Population Collection Bonus will now grant +0.1 influence per industry spent (cumulative with the original bonus due to emperor's will)
- Silken Diplomacy was replaced by Iron will which grant a +10% industry to all system when staying United Empire
- United Empire military choice of "A hidden Rebellion - Part 1" quest will now only ask the player to reach 800 maximum manpower on empire
- Sheredyn 50 population collection bonus will now grant +5 influence per 100 manpower on system
- Unfallen vining modules are now 20% faster
- Boosted DPS of Basic Plasma Beam to 11 (instead of 9)
- Leeching module will now also grant essence per destroyed cp in battle.
- Science from scrap will now grant 20 science per CP destroyed
- Hissho AI now has a base Keii income (stronger when under colonization threshold) depending on game difficulty
- Fixed the issue where Vodyani specific tech Applied Casimir Effect and Dimensional Folding overlapped in the tech tree

This should be the last iteration for this version of the balance mod.  If you still have remarks to make about what we modified, please do not hesitate to tell us and we'll try to implement them in the next update.  We know that there are still some other issues like the Riftborn population production flow and the Hissho balance that need to be fixed.  Some of those will have to wait another Balance Mod and some others will require some programming down the line and should therefore happen in a future update; so do not feel too down if your pet peeve didn't make the cut this time.

Have a nice day :) 

This looks good!

- Boosted DPS of Basic Plasma Beam to 11 (instead of 9)
- Leeching module will now also grant essence per destroyed cp in battle.

Hey, thanks for listening! Now let's just hope the Plasma Beam isn't strictly better than the next laser? ;) (I'll check some more of these out.)

- United Empire Population Collection Bonus will now grant +1 influence per industry spent (cumulative with the original bonus due to emperor's will)

I'm not sure I understand this. Per industry 'spent'? If I build something worth 500 industry I get 500 influence?

That's...quite strong, if so.