Finding the Academy Quest

I like your idea. Hiding the Academy under a Curiosity signal would be a good way of making the 'Find the Academy' quest more relevant, though honestly that quest is hard enough as it is - just like with the Vodyani 'find 5 ruins' quest, getting that large a number of Curiosity types in a normal sized galaxy before they all get searched by rivals can be very difficult, especially with pirate fleets.

Perhaps it should be a cooperative quest - throughout the galaxy, six (or a higher, uneven number) Signal Curiosities need to be uncovered, and the faction that searched the most Signals in this way gets the reward.

Another way to make the Academy quest more meaningful would be to hide the Academy under a level 2 Curiosity, meaning that players could detect it but not discover it in the early game without completing the quest (or being Sophon, and wasting a lot of early research time on the tier 2 curiosity tech).

It even could be as hidden as Asimov's Foundation: pretending to be "just a poor colony" without hints about its real purpose. Then there is no such (one) Curiosity that can unhide Academy - but number of Curiosities to find the trace of not-really-minor faction

It could also be an unconnected system, that you can't find (even with probes) until the "Tracking Down" step has been completed.  Placed as centrally on the map as possible, too, so everyone has a roughly equal chance to find it.

And the research for the academy embassy seems useless. Someone will found it before you build the embassy.

The whole "6 atmospheric curiosities" is very out of touch right now. In most of my games I can't even find 6 atmospherics to probe in both my constellation and the centre one, and I'm in the centre by turn 15!

6 atmospheric curiosities is impossible in most games.  How about a large number of curiosities (50) adjusted for system size or

Either this shouldn't be a fail for the lucky Empire that finds the Academy by chance. Or, my recommended option, 'lock' that Curiosity to a Quest - namely, 'Rumor of an Academy'. Then nobody can discover the Academy, even if they settle the planet, until the Quest has been Completed. Also, if the planet has been blown up, let's have a graphic for that, rather than the 'Toxic' planet.

Personally I think the best way to make finding the academy more difficult is to not provide a highlight of the three places it might be. That's after making it unmarked until you know what you're looking for (the finding the anomalies part.)

Rakabar wrote:

my recommended option, 'lock' that Curiosity to a Quest - namely, 'Rumor of an Academy'. Then nobody can discover the Academy, even if they settle the planet

I think this is a good idea as it will also give another dmension for this quest which seeùs appaering from nomwhere and drive the player expansion in the direction of the mark .

100% Agree that academy is too easy to find and also have to mention that AI on high difficulties still complete quest with anomalies to damn fast :P

Agree.

I feel the entire Academy questline is still a little anticlimatic. 

- One can build the Academy Embasy(or what ever the system improvement is called) before even finding the Academy.

- For once its too easy to find the Academy early in game. 

- Owning the Academy is does not provides us with any new game mechanics, only a hero recruitment time reduction and some information about who owns what hero. Thus fighting for controll of the system is usually not an interesting option.

- The defending the Accademy from rogue Vodyani quest (not sure if random mission or part of the Academy quest line) not always spawns on each playtrhough. Thus most people miss up on some Academy related and lore-building quest. 

- The Destroying/Securing the nodes part simply drags out for too long with the AI(both friends and foes) simply camping on the nodes with hero-less fleets and not even atacking eachother.

- The ending leaves a lot to be speculated. So what happens if we resusitate the Lost? Nothing. What happens if we dont resusitate them? Nothing(althouhg this is fine in this scenario).

It needs more to it :/ 

Bump on this, its gettin' a bit crusty!