Hit an annoyance in my current game.  I'm having my first serious fight with the Vodyani since the protection module was introduced (took me a lot of googling to figure out why I couldn't just attack the ships), so I'm having to make do with ground invasions. I don't have an unstoppable military advantage due to tanking my Hissho economy (learning the faction...) so the invasions always end up being grindy but doable with some patience and good siege work.

This is not the case with the Vodyani.  The fights are currently impossible as the Arks keep filling with military power and dumping it into the ground battle.  Is it supposed to work this way?  I literally have no idea if this is a new problem or not since I've always just blown up the ships.  I'll have to abandon the war and come back to it when I have more of the military techs researched and just hope they haven't kept pace with their troop strength.  I could also hope the AI randomly upgrades away the protection module, but I'm guessing they prioritze it.

I'm playing with Vaulters and Supremeacy active at the moment.  Other expansion content is installed but not active. 

For all the wall of text, what he means is that the ark, being a ship, recovers its own manpower, then supplies it to the defending groundforces. 

Thereby, even a system completely devoid of population and blockaded can benefit from 300 or so extra manpower every turn, until the Vodyani runs out of Empire manpower. 

It's a bit obnoxious. 

I played the Vodyani once a long time ago, and remember them being very challenging to play as, and I didn't get very far, so I'm not going to pretend like I can comment on how fair this is. 

I think it happens because technically you are in the Vodyani's sphere of influence, so the Ark can refill its manpower like any other ship.  As long as the Vodyani has Empire manpower, the ship will continually be refilled.  And as long as the Vodyani have enough food, the empire manpower will continually be refilled.  It seems like it could be not too difficult to get into a situation where one Ark (and thus one planet) has inifinite manpower.  Therefor, you'd need to follow Barf's advise to only invade when you have the capability to wipe out all 320 manpower of the Ark in a single attack, once the planet's manpower has been bombarded down to 0 via sieging.

The one thing I'm not sure about is if the Ark being able to refill 320 manpower / turn is correct.  Even if you have plenty of Empire Manpower reserves, I thought that ships had a manpower fill rate. I didn't think they normally refill at 100% each turn.  I'll have to pay more attention to this. There are admirals who can increase fill rate, but IIRC Arks cannot have admirals. I don't know if there is a senate law that increases it.

All the comments on this have been spot on from everything I experienced.  Seems like the best fix to this would be making blockaded arks not be allowed to refill.  I don't mind the unsiegable portion of their manpower as its makes thematic sense.  

Regarding the game I was in, it did come down to abandoning the war and coming back later with a a dramatically superior power and deployment caps.  Good thing they weren't one of the civilizations that managed to maintain military parity.  

I don't know if we have anyone around collecting balance ideas for a mod or not, but I think to really determine what should be done, someone should abuse this ability to demonstrate what the worst case scenario is.  

Manpower modules on an unsiegable Ark sounds "OP", but you are spending all those modules rather than using them on something else.  Cloaked fleets can also be used to surprise a Vodyani player, so it's not impossible to get around. They would have to have anti cloakers in every neutral system to be alerted to an invasion, or constantly send out probes.  I don't think Vodyani being "un-invadable" early game has to be a dealbreaker, since this game thrives on asymmetric balance, but maybe there are other things I'm not considering.  Very interesting discussion.

Vodyani Arks with Manpower modules is one thing. Dark Glitter system improvements that create manpower out of thin air(225/turn with three upgrades) is a nightmare. Not only can you draft manpower and replace the population with essence but then gain system manpower for free thanks to Dark Glitter(not factoring in other systems refilling Empire manpower from Food production). Not even hacking a system will stop Dark Glitter so yeah the ideal Luxury for Vodyani is Dark Glitter as i see it(as crazy as that might seem).

Sublustris wrote:

No, it all comes down to relative deployed forces. It doesn't matter if Vodyani always have bare minimum of 525 manpower every turn, as long as you can deploy 2525 manpower with help of ship modules, to kill off defenders in one turn. It's irritating, but it's possible. Also, this is why planet-detroying weapons exist in this game.

The problem is, that Vodyani, not even designed to be strong defensive fraction (like unfallen), difenetly is. Planet Crackers and Obliterator? Arc can retreat. Raids in territory? Meh, just ignore them. Let's talk. when they copme with Armade and Siege us before invading for 10-12 turn. This time is enough to vipe Half of the Empire of other Factions.