I have a system with a planet that has a negative effect on happiness...

I don't understand where that penalty is coming from. Anyone know or have a suggestion? The negative anamoly is Kessler Syndrome. 

You get negative happiness of varying degrees from different planet types per population on them. If you hover over the planet with your mouse, it will tell you in the bottom left. I see you've 2 lavas there for example, that on its own is a lot of disapproval.

Toxic, Barren, Lava, Desert, Ice, Arctic, Arid, Snow, Tundra, Savannah, and Mediterranean (I feel like I'm missing a couple) all provide negative per-population unit public order/happiness levels. 

So Arid will deduct from your overall system happiness by -2 per population unit on the planet, and the rate increases the more sterile the planet is. I think Lava or Ash does -8 per population unit.

You can check how much it deducts by scrolling over the planet with your mouse and then multiplying the number by the number of population units currently on the planet.

Typically as the Vodyani you would want to anchor on a system that does not have planets that reduce the public order since the Vodyani cannot terraform planets to Terran/Forest/Ocean/Atoll/etc  

The only time you wouldn't want to do this is when the planet provides significant strategic and/or luxury resource bonuses or is extremely lucrative in dust or science production (depending on what victory type you're going for) or if it's necessary for a quest (like sometimes the Academy system has really bad planets but part of the Vodyani Heretic quest tells you to claim the system). 

Suis3i wrote:

Toxic, Barren, Lava, Desert, Ice, Arctic, Arid, Snow, Tundra, Savannah, and Mediterranean (I feel like I'm missing a couple) all provide negative per-population unit public order/happiness levels. 

So Arid will deduct from your overall system happiness by -2 per population unit on the planet, and the rate increases the more sterile the planet is. I think Lava or Ash does -8 per population unit.

You can check how much it deducts by scrolling over the planet with your mouse and then multiplying the number by the number of population units currently on the planet.

Typically as the Vodyani you would want to anchor on a system that does not have planets that reduce the public order since the Vodyani cannot terraform planets to Terran/Forest/Ocean/Atoll/etc  

The only time you wouldn't want to do this is when the planet provides significant strategic and/or luxury resource bonuses or is extremely lucrative in dust or science production (depending on what victory type you're going for) or if it's necessary for a quest (like sometimes the Academy system has really bad planets but part of the Vodyani Heretic quest tells you to claim the system). 

Or if it's the linking system between you and Vaulter's end of a constellation? Or is it really going to be a waste of an Arc? It does have valuable resources luxury and strategic.

Wow these guys are suuuuuuuuuuuuuper weird. Really complicated and impressive adaptation of some of the traits and tricks of the Sowers from Endless Space 1. 

PotatoesAreBland wrote:

Suis3i wrote:

Toxic, Barren, Lava, Desert, Ice, Arctic, Arid, Snow, Tundra, Savannah, and Mediterranean (I feel like I'm missing a couple) all provide negative per-population unit public order/happiness levels. 

So Arid will deduct from your overall system happiness by -2 per population unit on the planet, and the rate increases the more sterile the planet is. I think Lava or Ash does -8 per population unit.

You can check how much it deducts by scrolling over the planet with your mouse and then multiplying the number by the number of population units currently on the planet.

Typically as the Vodyani you would want to anchor on a system that does not have planets that reduce the public order since the Vodyani cannot terraform planets to Terran/Forest/Ocean/Atoll/etc  

The only time you wouldn't want to do this is when the planet provides significant strategic and/or luxury resource bonuses or is extremely lucrative in dust or science production (depending on what victory type you're going for) or if it's necessary for a quest (like sometimes the Academy system has really bad planets but part of the Vodyani Heretic quest tells you to claim the system). 

Or if it's the linking system between you and Vaulter's end of a constellation? Or is it really going to be a waste of an Arc? It does have valuable resources luxury and strategic.

I was just giving examples lol, yeah if it has strategic importance you should keep it, or just straight up conquer the Vaulters so you don't need to share the constellation; but the examples I gave above (other than the Dust/Science one) are things you can't exactly change, i.e quest conditions or the amount of strategic/luxury resources a system has 

I'm really enjoying playing on the Serious difficulty. Endless difficulty can throw pretty early. I've lost a game and I think I see part of the difficulty for the faction. I played a lot of Endless Legend. This faction is ... like a roving cultist clan with a broken lord quest chain?

The system upgrades for Vodyani now give a +1 approval per pop regardless of the resource used for the upgrade. If you follow the religious quest line, and get an upgrade or two, it's pretty hard to not be on ecstatic even on the worst systems. There's always that religious law you can use, but I suggest switching to republic before you do so, as it will force your systems to happy, rather than content, which is quite a big deal.

I've been spending a lot of time with Vodyani as I struggled to get a handle on them for a long time, but now I'm finding it difficult to go back to anyone else. Some tips:

1) Don't rush out your Arks if you have 3 or more easy to access planets on your home/nearby system. Get the population first. It really accelerates your early game. Two holy proliferations is cheaper than an Ark. Don't worry about having less systems than everyone else. It's supposed to be that way. There is no point in waiting another 10 turns for an Ark, when you could be getting extra FIDSI much sooner. Plus it speeds up your essence gain with your first religious law.

2) Stick an engine on that first leecher. If you luck out with a minor/major faction nearby, it's no big loss. If you don't, you won't regret having considerably more speed to find one.

3) Don't be scared to move your first Ark if there is a much better system nearby. If you do this before turn 5, you will eventually have to retake Tchinomy to start your faction quest.
 
4) Focus on science modules for your Arks. Science is probably the hardest resource to get hold of in good quantities, for any faction, for a very long time, as science heavy planets are the most difficult to develop. Keep the one essence module on your Ark, and make all the other modules science ones. You can change this much, much later in the game, with more specialised Arks, once you've already researched some big guns. Upgrade the module regularly through research in the science tree - which is argubly the most important tree for Vodyani.

5) If you have pirates on, never, ever, leave an Ark undefended. Push forward slowly until they are well upgraded both with weapons, armour, and system levels (which add to their hp and damage). Early on, even the first level pirates can kill an Ark due to the hull weakness. Don't delay on getting your corvettes out.

6) Focus on number of planets, rather than size or quality. Size doesn't matter to Vodyani, and the quality can be countered by the aforementioned system upgrades. As a general rule - anything thing below 3 planets is bad. If you have to conquer a two planet system (like the Tabernacle/homeworld quests), take it, then move on to somewhere better.

7) Here's the real secret. You know that population screen that no one uses but Horatio? And that you can use luxuries to boost population growth? Yeh, well that population growth boost doubles bonus FIDSI of any pop type it's used on. That means, for Vodyani, you get +8 (!!!) rather than +4 on FIDS per pop. And because your pop is low, you can use it pretty much permanantly. If you don't have access to it planet wise, then buy whatever resource it is in the market (it's always a tier 1 resource). This makes a huge difference to Vodyani, making your few systems complete powerhouses with just 3-4 Vodyani on each.

Happy hunting!

Oh I always check the population bonuses! Some of them are amazing boosted. That was definietly a crippling limitation in my last game, they needed wine and there was a wine deficit. I made some of the most ludicrous trades because I was trying to get wine.

I didn't have the influence until late game to switch so I kind of forgot about it. That's super helpful advice. All of it was really.

Also I'll add that Religious Military & Ecologist would be a fantastic combination. I'll see if I can pull it off.

I made a post about how hard it is for vodyani to get good happiness.

Also Ontological Rev. Eng. was not working properly, seems like it was fixed in lates patch, not sure tho.

You will get tons of negative approval from almost all planets especialy gas, lava and etc. (-8 per population), when you reach higher population it is almost impossible to get good approval, even with tons of buildings on approval and system upgrades.
Why do we need approval anyway? Well there are specific structures that increase science income when approval is on happy and when approval is high you get more food and influence income. Over all approval gives more dust and science income. As you might noticed that science is complemented by approval level AND as we know vodyani are anti-sceince faction.
So briefly what you can do:
Anti-Science:
1. Ignore all approval and use "Saint's and Sinners Bill" at later stages of the game.
2. Ignore all buildings that will give science per level of approval, this will also save few dust coins :P
3. Use Debris Analyzer for early science points. It is also possible to find improved version of that module, which might lead to insane science boost at any stage of the game.
War:
1. Get Dictatorship and put military into senate and declare war on as many minor factions as possible (basically do as cravers do)
2.Vodyani ships are flexable, so can pretty much start a war with any major faction early on and be ok.

I really don't think any of those things are necessary.

Here's one of my level 2 systems, the anomaly on the desert is coral reefs (lol), so it doesn't give happiness. And you can see there is acid rain, and perma monsoon (again, lol) on the ash:



And it's at ecstatic.

These are the laws I'm running:



Pretty standard late game Vodyani laws, but nothing that boosts happiness. Here are my system upgrades:



So, there is one transvine at lvl 2, for the +15 approval. The only on system approval building is infinite super markets (I almost never get Well Being Institute, too much anti-matter). I'm also 4 systems over cap, which negates that +15 by a -25:



Where's all that happiness coming from? Here:

In all honesty, this might be a bug, but it's been around for a while. No idea where the maths came from, but each of my pops is producing 16 of their own happiness due to system upgrades alone, which is more than enough to counter any negative effects on planets. In other words, the more population you have, the happier your space vampires will be on their systems. So for now, the solution to all your troubles is - get population and system upgrades. Fingers crossed it's not a bug, as it makes Vodyani far more viable.