Good time of the day everyone.

Some time ago i suggested Essence Scrap Modules for Vodyani ships and Vodyani Ark being or only fighting ships (with the suggestion to buff them) or only station ships.
So far we got middle ground, a module that allows to make Ark siegeable like a normal planets. (although it is currently bugged)
But we've got no upgrade to Vodyani Essence gain, nor news/info about that. I swear, i can see small glimpse of fighting for essence in new keii, but instead of creating pops Hissho gets bonuses. Those Essence per destroyed ship would fit so well to lore and game synergy.
Few examples:
1. Lore wise - If you have watched Vodyani vision, Vodyani had a space battle with Sophons, which they won and all crew of Sophons were loaded to Vodyani ships and were consumed as an Essence.
2. Gameplay wise - first quest of Vodyani is to destroy pirate ships (that sometimes spawn so far away and even worse sometimes without baryonic shielding it is impossible to reach them)

About Vodyani pops. They have 4/4/4 Fidsi, which is 1 less than Riftborn, but for what price? -50% all food production. There is another way to increase pop, but it is almost always used to creat ARK, while riftborns are free to colonize anything without having struggle with a unique resource. My suggestion would be ask @Aitarus permission to add his vodyani rework stats into game. Which are6 FIDSI, only able to reproduce through Holy Proliferation and no ability to boost by consuming luxuries. Personaly i would increase FIDSI, unless Essence from scrap modules are added, then 6 are perfect.

Thank you for your attention, have a nice day!

Realistically I think Vodyani should require food only for *maintaining* population. Production of essence is honestly a non-issue. I'm certianly in favor of essence collection after battles but the way the Vodyani work you're incentivized (heavily) to plop arks down in the middle of enemy empires and eat their population / gain huge passive bonuses to essence from laws.

Vodyani are probably the only faction I never feel hosed for failing to grow population with, and once you hit midgames after a couple arks growing population is quick and easy (literally +1 population a turn on new arks until full). And because of the way Vodyani systems work you don't need to colonize every system, in fact you gain a lot by *not* colonizing systems and simply eating territory control.