I love the vody, and im having happiness problems on planets, anomalies that affect one planet are affecting my entire population multiple times, i had 2 system both mutinous for no reason besides meteor strikes, them i researched the tech that resolved that, nothing happens, only the saints and sinners law saved me. Now about the mod, i have not tried it yet, but i will get it and see, i do not like mods that get directly into factions, but playing on endless difficult some times... They need some sort of reliable early game, that's all. either start always with 3 or 4 planets ( yes that's how shit their start is without minors ), or first Ark having a super low cost, or the production/essence production modules having lower prices too. 

Anyway i will try the mod, i like they using food but less need say.

yeap the enemies expand like hell for example.

Thanks, I'll try, maybe things are a bit different on lower difficulty levels. 

PS: The mod seems quite interesting and seems to go in the right direction...

Now, play on endless, both civs, pirates on normal. It can be me, but i feel they rather weak.

plutar wrote:

This mod and the combat mod are absolutly much better and more balanced than the current state of the game. Unfortunatly the general distrust of people think enabling a mod in mp allows the player who asked to use it gives them a distinct advantage. Its why mods in multiplayer are always so difficult even the g2g balance mod from back in the day.  The botton line is these mods should be included into the main patch for the game to increase the willing player base and also it would taje vodyani out of the broken status in mulyiplayer which would be wonderful.  Aitarus and his work on vodyani and combat make a better experience that imo should be in the live version of the game! 

Indeed! I can't play Vodyani without it and wouldn't even touch them in a multiplayer game if the mod wasn't there. I truly hope the devs has checked the mod to steal some ideas for a future patch, as it's not so much about making Vodyani OP as just bringing down the curve of being completely UP majority of the time and a pain to play.

Vodyani is severely under-represented (just check overall achievements of all players owning the game and anything Vodyani related is at the bottom of the factions and not by a small percentage) and yet one of the coolest factions in the game I see a lot of players wanna play, but get turned off from continuing (either the faction or the game) cause they're so hard to play right.

This mod and the combat mod are absolutly much better and more balanced than the current state of the game. Unfortunatly the general distrust of people think enabling a mod in mp allows the player who asked to use it gives them a distinct advantage. Its why mods in multiplayer are always so difficult even the g2g balance mod from back in the day.  The botton line is these mods should be included into the main patch for the game to increase the willing player base and also it would taje vodyani out of the broken status in mulyiplayer which would be wonderful.  Aitarus and his work on vodyani and combat make a better experience that imo should be in the live version of the game! 

Aitarus wrote:

Mod just got updated:

• Multiple Ark designs support. Select 'Ark' from the drop-down menu in ship designs. NB: if you choose Ark, then another hull, the ship designer freaks out. Close and re-open the session to create a different ship.
• Ark FIDSI modules can once again be stacked, up to a maximum of five of any combination per Ark. They all now attract a strategic cost (10 when slotted), to be similar to equivalent era system improvements
• Deactivates broken Vodyani system development approval

God bless, ugh sorry Virtuals bless you :D
Damn i am so going to test that now!

Just to add something, which surprised me in my multiplayer playthrough with my friend new to ES2, as we were winning our long game, Vodyani AI was the first one to pull out carriers followed by Cravers. I took a screenshot of this first battle cause honestly I've never faced them with carriers in vanilla, so it excited me! There was more battles I didn't take screenshots of, one with 3 carriers that blew half second fleet without a hero.

You might want to check out http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1232683114 or the more extreme http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1233946283 which make systems (as far as I can tell) between 3 (for the first mod) or 4 planets minimum, 5 still being the cap.

Now, the Vodyani Rework mod... I absolutely love it. No longer am I shackled by the burden that is Chain Gangs, my population can naturally grow manpower and Arks can have more meaningful addon choice than 'All Must Tithe x5'. The early essence generation is a bit of a concern (for some reason the module shows +50 Essence but I was only getting +20 per turn?) but as the game goes on I can properly decide between Ark Generation or Population Growth (Essence Levies being an incredible boon that lets me sacrifice influence growth I'm not concerned with for much more needed Essence) Virtual Triage and Endless Assemblies are much better for the Vodyani in character.

The only complaint I have about this mod is it's apparently not compatible with Custom Vodyani that aren't using Shipbound or Other Custom Race's Shipbound... but that's a pretty minor complaint for me seeing as Vodyani are one of my two favorite races to play (and now giving me some actual competition between Riftborn, not just aesthetically but gameplay-wise.)

Hello.

My favorite faction are Vodyani (if that is not obvious :D) and i spend most of game, if not all, playing vodyani. Searching for the best tactics, strategy, tricks and etc. Althought i found some good gameplay patterns it was not enough, so i was messing with black magic which lead me to this - Vodyani Rework.
This my friends is a step in the right direction! Removing all growth from food and all food attribute replacing with manpower, this good sir - Aitarus fixed tons of problems.
What he took a close look into is what religious faction is all about and it is about INFLUENCE and he made a conection between those two - Essence and Influence (in a right way).
I suggest every Vodyani player test it. Share your thoughts and spread word so this mod can be concidered as a foundation of a Vodyani rework. Some thing might be op in your opinion and something might still be missing with this mod, but i still think it is way from what we have on a live servers.
Sadly it is  a problem for me to play multiplayer with this mod, because almost everyone declines downloading this mod (for a different reasons i do not know), to say how it is vs real people not only AI. Vs AI tho this mod felt insanely good.

Foraven wrote:

Hum... I have not tried any mod for ES2 yet, but I guess it will be the first one I try. 

It's really good, even for the AI as demostrated! Having tried Aitarus other mods before Vaulters xpac, which balances things such as combat and victory conditions, I'd recommend those as well when they get release again. He's done really well at rebalancing things.

Hum... I have not tried any mod for ES2 yet, but I guess it will be the first one I try. 

By Their grace we were elevated.

I'm looking forward to the mod update. I wasn't aware it had an issue with the Multiple Ark Designs mod. But now that I know they will be compatible I may give it a try while waiting for Amplitude to fix Ark design management. (It's a shame that the best solution currently possible is one ship design per system, but I imagine that would be better than the current unmodded version).

I tried it for a couple of games before the xpac, and Vodyani feels a lot-lot better and easier to get into. For anyone who likes the idea/visuals of Vodyani but can't quite grasp their playstyle or finding it lacking, I'd say to grab the mod!

One of my favorite mods, alas it's incompatible with a few other things I've got going at the moment otherwise it'd always be in my rotation.

@Aitarus: Howdy! I think I mentioned it on the comments that the one big bit of feedback is I'd like some sort of option to convert system Food into Essence so the reworked Vodyani have a reason to hang out on Fertile planets outside of the Happiness bonus, given at the moment both Food and Population slots (The big reasons to snap up Tier 0 planets) are irrelevant on them. Even Riftborn take them for their various Minor Factions, which the Vodyani don't get. And I will say +6 IDS is... really good. Good enough to make a strong start a very strong start. I can see why people in Multiplayer might balk at it. Of course, I also play with a mod that happens to reduce Riftborn to +2 Dust/Science +4 Industry, and they're still quite fun to play, so I feel you can make the Vodyani Pop weaker without keeping them from being an incredibly potent Pop in their own right. Maybe making them +2 IDS, +50 System Manpower? Make it harder to take Arks with a dedicated Manpower fleet early on.