So, I really love the Broken Lords in EL and I've seen folks claim that the Vodyani are sort of their spiritual descendants in ES2. The thing is, whenever I play the Vodyani, I find I'm always at a loss on what to do. I've tried researching dust first, but that didn't seem to help all that much. I've tried abducting whichever minor faction is unlucky enough to live near me, but they end up destroying my ships eventually. Does anyone have any tips/tricks that they'd like to share about how to play the Vodyani? At this point, I'll take anything. Troop composition, Tech priorities, Ninja abduction techniques, etc. I really want to love the Vodyani but right now I'm just... vexed. 

Arks are expensive so cherry-pick the systems you want to occupy. Look for systems where you can occupy 2 or more planets with the least amount of researched required. Move your Starter Ark if you think you'll need too much time gathering the Essence for new one. Dont shy to move your Ark to a better system when you spot one. Eventhough they have low populace, their people are not divided over the different colonies (like the other races), instead they are duplicated on each unlocked planet-type in the system. Buy the 2nd citizen with Essence, that should raise food production so you can grow the third, unlock the other planet-types in that system and pretty soon that base starts growing production at an exponential rate...  ;)

Good Luck.

OmegaPraetor wrote:

So, I really love the Broken Lords in EL and I've seen folks claim that the Vodyani are sort of their spiritual descendants in ES2. The thing is, whenever I play the Vodyani, I find I'm always at a loss on what to do. I've tried researching dust first, but that didn't seem to help all that much. I've tried abducting whichever minor faction is unlucky enough to live near me, but they end up destroying my ships eventually. Does anyone have any tips/tricks that they'd like to share about how to play the Vodyani? At this point, I'll take anything. Troop composition, Tech priorities, Ninja abduction techniques, etc. I really want to love the Vodyani but right now I'm just... vexed. 

I like keeping the hero with the fleet and merging them and keeping him with the fleet until I can have a full 4. This somewhat depends on how quickly you find the minor faction (and since you only have 1 search fleet, can be frustrating if its the last place you look) as I believe there is a slight military buildup that happens if you find it late. I.e. if you find it early, it seems that you will be 3 ships to 2 ships. Whereas if you find it late, they will be at 4 ships and you probably can't take the fight until you are stacked. Also, if you are in a tight bind, don't be afraid to use your 2nd Ark as a glorified attacker. You have to stablize before anything else. I'm actually more leaning towards getting early weapons upgrades over the specialized FIDSI Ark modules because if you have a slow start, it's probably stronger that way.

I've been messing around with just ignoring minor factions to see how they can do in those circumstances. I didn't end up finishing the game, but it was going decently against Endless AI. The generic approval for dust law and/or the relgious dust law help a good amount with Dust. You have to toggle the dust for essence improvement pre-emptively because otherwise you will hit backrupcy eventually (cause you will be gaining no dust, but still paying for your upkeep costs). I had 4-5 Arks probably around turn 70-80 or so on fastest? I don't remember. It didn't feel optimal, so I wanted to see if there were changes I could make to improve and was pretty sure my technology path wasn't optimal. If I continued, I probably would try to get unlock to another law slots to get both (or maybe something else for dust if it came up) and switch to Republic and aim to hit the T4 (I think) Ark module upgrades so they can really start to be efficient. I was using the basic Essence Ark modules (3 and 1 engine) which seemed good enough to get going.

Also make sure you learn the battle system, as you really need to be able to take the fights with your leeching fleet. Generally speaking, I've found that range is the most important thing, and