A Tweak Specifically for Umbral Choir Stealthed Sanctuaries and Nexus

Why is this idea being proposed?

I have heard a fair deal of grumbling over a player's enjoyment of facing against an Umbral Choir faction. There are people who go out of their way to disable Penumbra because of this. I believe the stealth mechanics and hacking mechanics work very fine on their own, but the way Sanctuaries and the Nexus cloaking work may need a change. In particular, I believe the problem lies with how linear and completely committal sanctuary stealth is for both sides of the equation. Umbral Choir MUST colonize more planets in the system to keep sanctuaries hidden, the opponent MUST invest in heavy military technology just to reveal these sanctuaries, with the only saving grace being if the Umbral Choir player gets a hack traced back to a sanctuary. In particular for the opponent, they have no true choice. Either they ignore the Umbral Choir player, or they invest heavily in anti-cloaking technology in the military tree. I believe a lot of the gripe players have with the the Umbral Choir is rooted in this lack of meaningful choice, where they are very deliberately forced to change their research to one specific technology just because someone picked Umbral Choir.

What is this idea proposing?

I believe a meaningful change to how Sanctuaries and perhaps even the Nexus are cloaked and how other factions interact with the mechanic of colony cloaking is required. I have several concepts which can be mixed and matched with one another. Most can be seen as a 'nerf' to the Umbral Choir for Multiplayer but a slightly weaker Umbral Choir is far better than nobody playing with the Umbral Choir. Furthermore, most of these proposed changes would not affect Singleplayer Umbral Choir all that much, unless the AI could learn how to utilize the features in question. They already seem quite bad at finding the Umbral Choir, though. Anyway, here are the ideas.

1.) Create Research Redundancy for Anti-Cloaking

Add the same anti-cloaking modules from Military in one other research branch ((likely Science)) on top of the anti-cloaking already present in the Military branch, allowing for more player choice for dealing with the Umbral Choir. Would I like to make a very heavy military push for the UC, or would I like to do a light push against the UC Without sacrificing scientific power? You're still sacrificing possible economy and political upgrades depending on which research nodes the anti-cloaks are put on, but it offers more player choice, which I think is very sorely needed for player vs Umbral Choir gameplay. Here's another idea from  a person from the ES reddit, TrashySwashy; "I believe even tying decloak strength (or maybe even modules) to unlocking military stages would be a significant improvement over the current state, having to just unlock tier 4 would already be a significant improvement over having to complete Antimatter Channeling. Anything cheaper than that would be unfair towards UC IMO."

2.) Change how Sanctuary/Nexus cloaking is achieved.

Perhaps, in particular, change how it works specifically for Sanctuaries, as it is currently super easy to get level 3 cloaking on sanctuaries, Perhaps make the UC player require a military tier upgrade to unlock level 2 and level 3 sanctuary cloaking on top of the current requirement of colonizing several planets?

3.) Design more ways to Discover Sanctuaries and the Umbral Choir Nexus

I believe it would help gameplay a lot if opposing players had more options to search for Umbral Choir colonized systems. I have three ideas to propose for this function and they all relate to discovering an Umbral Choir sanctuary/nexus. I feel like changing the gameplay for how Nexus/Sanctuaries are cloaked may get more complicated to balance out, but feel free to make other suggestions.

1. Trace Dark Matter Scanner: A module somewhere ((military, Science)) which offers a new way to decloak specifically Umbral Choir sanctuaries and the nexus.
   Lore explanation; it's a highly delicate scientific sensor suite which compares ambient stellar dark matter levels with dark matter in more localized points in a solar system. If given time, the Trace Dark Matter Scanner can identify anomalous Dark Matter concentrations, allowing the empire to discover cloaked sanctuaries/nexus.
   Gameplay: It's a module you stick on a hero or explorer ship that requires the ship's fleet to orbit a system you suspect a sanctuary or nexus to exist within. Within 5??? (unsure on specific) turns, the TDMC will either reveal a level 1 cloaked colony, or tell the player “no level 1 colony found.” 5 more turns, level 2 revealed or “no level 2 colony found.” 5 more turns, level 3 or “no level 3 colony found.” Once found, the sanctuary or nexus is discovered. The module should be found rather early game. This would incentivize the Umbral Choir player to create more early game military and keep snooping players from snooping. Another idea: Make it take less turns to scan for systems that you own. Perhaps based on your system's system development level.
2. Dark Energy Upload Feedback: A research discovered somewhere ((Military, Science)) which offers a new way to utilize the hacking feature for the purpose of discovering specifically Umbral Choir sanctuaries and the nexus. The Dark Energy Transfer Feedback is an offensive hacking program which can be used on any system which you have a hack passing through, including uninhabited systems and special nodes. The DETF can be stacked on the same system up to 3 times.
   Lore explanation: it's a data stream capable of shooting dark energy into a system and uploading any feedback from the energy transfer. Abnormal concentrations of dark matter would react to this dark energy, creating a recognizable feedback which can be detected by downloadng the returning energy.
   Gameplay explanation: You can use your hacking paths and bandwidth in conjunction to help search for the Umbral Choir. Because you can stack the Dark Energy Upload Feedback offensive program up to 3, that's meant to allow you to search for level 1, 2 and 3 cloaked colonies. Because bandwidth cap naturally increases over time as they do hacking research, this would naturally give higher level stealthed colonies an incentive to be upgraded to higher stealth, while simultaneously keeping the mechanic very simple to acquire and utilize, while allowing the technology or discovering of the program to happen rather early without being unbalanced. Because they are offensive programs, they can't be cancelled until your hack is done or cancelled, so you're also limited to how frequently you can use hacking to search for the Umbral Choir's holdings. Perhaps the UC can combat a Dark Energy Upload Feedback offensive program like this: If your sanctuary has an defensive program, it will get a warning when a Dark Energy Upload Feedback has started on their system. They will have the option to trace the hack or ignore it. If they trace it, the empire will know what system their sanctuary is but not 'where in the system' they are. AKA, the empire will have to go and use anti-cloaking probes or something to reveal them. Or, the UC can ignore it and hope the enemy did not use enough stacks of the Dark Energy Upload Feedback program.
3. Pirate Diplomacy: Get Cordial ratings with the pirates and pay them resources ((Dust, population, science, strategic resources, AN ENTIRE COLONY, something)) to make the pirates to send out search parties for the Umbral Choir. Pirates are already one of the only things that keep a UC from turtling in complete safety, so why not make them more of a threat?  Perhaps a sort of 'hidden pirate mark' that you can't place yourself, but one that is enabled if the pirates discovered the UC's home system. Called "Target Umbral Choir Nexus." Or perhaps a way to sell the location of sanctuaries they could have discovered to other empires? It's an idea trying to use what we already have.

4.) Make Some Sort of Gameplay Feature that gives 'Hints' to Umbral Choir Locations

Pretty much what it says on the tin. I don't have any concrete ideas for this concept as I doubt players would enjoy chasing false positive hints on UC locations, but I thought it would be worth mentioning. Players can already logic out where a UC MIGHT be based on empire spawning locations, hacking notifications and so on, so this is the least useful concept. Perhaps you could buy cheap 'Hints' from pirates that offer 4 systems to look at, and only 1 is an Umbral Choir sanctuary?

In Conclusion

I really enjoy playing as the Umbral Choir and would really like it if more gameplay features were included to make playing against the Umbral Choir more engaging and active, rather than passive and uninteresting. Feel free to tell me I'm dumb and I should go back to my hidey hole or suggest your own ideas! I just had this on my mind for the past week and finally put my thoughts to words.

Closing Suggestion: Perhaps there could be a way to 're-cloak' a sanctuary and make them hidden once more to people who discovered them, forcing the player to keep anti-cloak probes on hand, as a buff to the UC if they feel too weak if there are too many ways to find them. That way, you still have to invest in the more expensive Anti-Cloaking modules but the UC can still 'fight back' if they happen to be found through the cheaper, though more turn-intensive alternatives. It could cost resources or population or something. The logic for it could be setting up sanctuaries elsewhere in the same system. After all, an entire solar system is still quite the big place to search!

4/16/2019 edit: Added a few bits and bobs to the suggestions, more proofreading.