I have two things to say about the 'resonant vessels' ability (orbiting ships create FIS) that was recently patched in in an attempt to balance the Harmony faction:



1) I'm very pleased to see the game still being supported, and being supported well indeed (and another free faction soon to be added, wow!). Credit to you for this, Amplitude!



2) I strongly dislike 'resonant vessels' concept and hope it gets changed into something better. I think it is an unelegant solution that creates far too much micromanagement and is counter-intuitive to Harmony's gameplay.



The only positive thing I have to say about 'resonant vessels' is that I acknowledge it plays well with the concept of Harmony having upkeep-free ships. Other than that it is plain bad design because:



a) It creates far too much (enormous!) micromanagement having to keep track of one's vessels at each system, adding more ships as CP max increases and so on... extremely tedious and time-consuming keeping track of all these ships. Isn't the game supposed to be about strategy and epic space battles rather than management?



b) It runs directly counter to your previous designs for the Harmony: They've now gone from being a strictly build-only-ships-if-needed faction into a directly opposite spam-as-many-ships-as-you-can faction. Why not look at some of the [good] solutions already offered by the community rather than this messy one?





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Feel free to post comments and/or ideas about something that would work better than 'resonant vessels' here!

Keeping track of fleets is quite easy if you just rename them based on their purpose. I rename my resonant fleets RES-1, RES-2, etc. as soon as the first ship of the fleet for that colony is built then just add, but not with the merge button, new ships to the renamed fleet. I'll name other fleets for their purpose as well, such as Trooper-# for my fleets of troop ships, LRK-# for a long range kinetic GCD fleets, Bomber-# for my fleets that have bombers with a bombing module. This way I can see at a glance which fleet I want to stay put, which fleet I want to attack with, etc. Sure, this adds a little micro management, but it only takes a few seconds to name a new fleet, that will later save time every time you need to add new ships, determine which fleet is best to attack with and which fleet bombards or just lands troops on a colony.



While I'd have liked to see some of the other suggestions for improving the harmony implemented, I do like this fix. Especially since the added FIS from the resonant fleets is before all the multipliers from tech, traits and improvements. With Big Fleets 2 trait, that's 26 CP at the cap, so +52 FIS before multipliers. Add in +50% science from the slider, +150% from Efficient Stock (galaxy set-up with abundant resources), +60% from the last 2 improvements and you've got a potential +187.2 science per full resonant fleet. Across just 25 systems that's a nice 4680 science on top of whatever you're getting from the other science improvements, planet types, exploitations and industry to science conversion.

Even more Micromanagement to give names to all those fleets.



I found the fix vailable and all and the harmony is now Multiplayer competitive but i have to agree with the OP its even more Micromanagement for a race which already had alot of micromanagment due the Food/Sience Slider and the Growth penalty while ship building.

When you add up all the time spent figuring out which fleet that new ship needs to be in, you'll find you save a lot more time than those few seconds it takes to name the fleets to something that tells you at a glance what that fleet's purpose is. Plus this makes using the rally point system a lot less annoying.



Now if they'd make the rally point system auto-group all the ships built at the same system on the same turn it'd be better. After all it's a bit ridiculous when one system can crank out 10 ships a turn with a 16 CP cap and the rally point system sends all 10 of those ship out in 10 different fleets.

While I agree on the annoying amount of Micromanagement(especially with the Food-science slider),



I cannot agree on the "Not the way they were meant to be played". With zero upkeep, their Crusader Attitude, their hugely superior hulls and the lack of many planetary improvements to build, they are predestined to just spam ships like crazy. Not to forget their "hive mentality" or atleast that's what I read into it, when I invade a secor of space controlled by Crusading Crystal lifeforms that used to be one big mind, I'd expect lots of lowly "drones" hanging around practically everywhere. this is just what RES does, It suggests to just park large useless fleets on your systems.

Before the fix you(ok I) were mostly converting labour into Food or science, which, while nicely circumventing the slider, just is terribly boring. Also I was always underwhelmed by my "pay no upkeep" bonus as i did not feel upkeep with other races, but now I had even less ships and thus even less "Profit" from it. It's a bit like in age of empires 2 playing huns but only having very limited resources: oh great I can train 200 units upstart, I don't have the resources to do so tho

Micromanagement is a real issue, but Harmony was always a ship spamming faction for me.



Unlike others, Harmony cannot rely on an emergency buyout/retrofit to save themselves, they need to prepare beforehand. They also have no penalty for spamming. I find key to balance growth is to dedicate systems for the sole purpose of spamming. Ideally you would have lava/methane systems with low pop limit that spam ship all the time while your other system handles science.



Harmony is definitely micromanagement heavy, but that micromanagement is front-loaded. Science-food is most powerful in the beginning when you can coordinate ship-building and growth phases between your planets, much less so later on. Case is similar for resonant fleets. They need lot of work in the beginning, but later on you just push on and leave old fleets behind. Also, impact of another +6 are much less important later on than in the beginning.



Yeah, I find the solution very creative and good. Perhaps to reduce micromanagements, maybe just rethink the limit: maybe instead of CP limit, put a real limit like 10 in the beginning and then 20 sometimes later with a tech. Maybe another increase to 40 very late game. This should reduce the need to redo the fleets so very often (and let you combine 2 old fleet into 1 real quick)

in my opinion its a good change because you just need to have the ships, there is no need to micromanage them once they are already there. also, if the harmony use actual warships then it is a lot harder to kill them earlier game, it gives them a reason for building up rather than out.

Makes sense, especially with that hidden +2% damage & defense per CP bonus.

Fits well with their lack of upkeep for ships.

I don't find the micromanagement that tedious, especially since you're likely to get the +2, +2 and +3 CP upgrades in a quick succession.

As for the food/science slider, this is the whole point of Harmony, is what makes them really different, and really adds to ES gameplay. I find the approval micromanagement of the other factions more tedious.