The Vodyani/Gameplay

The Vodyani worship the Virtual Endless, and scour the galaxy seeking ancient temples while devouring lesser beings.

About
**Gameplay**
Traits
Ships
Strategy

**Note**: Vodyani do not get access to terraforming or anomaly reduction technology, and they cannot enact planetary specializations.

On the other hand, Vodyani have access to modules that can be equipped on Arks to enhance the production of various resources.

## Essence

Essence  is the essential resource of the Vodyani, allowing them to create Vodyani pops and Arks, as well as filling up manpower. They have a storage limited by the amount of Arks. Every Ark increases the storage amount by 800, and the cost of each ark is (Essence storage - 200).

The cost of creating each Vodyani pop is (pop amount x 250).

## Unique Laws

Because of the unique playstyle of the Vodyani, a few of the laws have variant names and/or effects changed to better suit their mechanics. Mostly relating to Essence  production.

(Replaces New Colony Rule)
* +5% on System
* +2  peron Systems
* +5%  per Systems of other Empires under your influence
* Makes your systems immune to Influence Conversion

* **Editor's Notes:** Notably, the  Ecologist law level 3 and 4 could be considered to be practically useless for the Vodyani, which give +2% (+4% if **Republic**) / respectively for every population type present in the Empire. Since Vodyani are locked onto only having one population type *ever*, they can only get 1x bonus of this law.
* The Vodyani have Law Upkeep Cost and Law Effects calculated separately; the Law Upkeep cost is determined by the population the Ark has, whilst the effect is applied to how many copies of the population the Ark has.
	+ To put it in perspective, if you have an Ark of 3  docked on a system of 4 colonizable planets (3  x 4 = 12 Virtual Copies), and you enact the law "Cram Exam Act" in a non-Republic government (which gives +3  and -2  per ) that same system will get a multiplier of x12 and get +36  and -24 .
	+ That same system when used to enact the "Mineral Misers Act" which has an upkeep cost of 2  per , will only be multiplied by 3 instead of 12 and get a total upkeep of 6  in that system.

## Invasion

Vodyani have replacement actions for Pillage and Raze in Ground Invasion Outcomes.

* Hunt (Vodyani): Like Pillage except it also steals , presumably by eating people. No  penalty.
* Penance (Vodyani): Like Raze but you also gain a large amount of  each turn by turning the system into a hunting ground. No  penalty.

## Population on Arks

The Vodyani have some very unusual mechanics regarding population. Their population lives on individual Arks, and a "virtual/symbolic" instance of each population on the ship is simultaneously applied to each and every planet in the system to which it is currently docked. Thus, if you've got three population on your Ark docked in a system with two planets, the system will "appear" to have three population on each planet, for a total of six. The same Ark docked in a five-planet system would appear to have three on each planet for a total of **fifteen**, so ... you can see that it's particularly advantageous for the Vodyani to snag systems with large numbers of planets. Should you discover a more attractive system, you can simply undock the Ark and move it and all its citizens and system improvements (bar a very few unique improvements/wonders that say so in their tooltip) to their new home.

Two things are important to note: Firstly, since each citizen is 'virtualized' on every planet, Vodyani completely ignore the usual population capacity of planets. Huge planets will only be worked by the smaller population cap of the Ark (perhaps 3-5) even if they'd normally have a much higher capacity, but tiny planets and gas giants which would normally have only 1-2 capacity can, for the Vodyani, go all the way up to the capacity of their Ark. The capacity of an Ark is given by its system level (the ones which are unlocked by researching economic tiers and spending luxury resources), starting at 3 for tier 1 and increasing by 2 for each tier to a maximum of 9.

#### Colonization and Docking:

A given planet in a system is worked whenever the corresponding colonization tech has been researched. This process is automatic and instant, Vodyani do not need to manually expand to additional planets. Conversely, though, they cannot choose to not work a specific planet. This, combined with the fact that Vodyani have no access to terraforming or anomaly reduction techs, is something to consider when picking a system, as a juicy resource node can become far less attractive if the system is riddled with barren planets and detrimental anomalies, since the Vodyani cannot avoid taking the hit from the planet's  maluses.

Arks have two states - docked, and undocked. When undocked, an Ark acts simply as a movable ship, able to participate in combat like any other. An undocked Ark generates no , however. Any improvements and pop that system had are "remembered" by that Ark, even though you have no UI to view them, and will immediately be present again when that Ark docks on a system. When docked, that "system" immediately becomes available again with no cooldown.

**Note:** you cannot dock at a system if all of the planets are considered uninhabitable (ie., if you have none of the necessary colonization techs).

## Population Mechanics

An extremely unusual aspect of the Vodyani is that you're not allowed to have any non-Vodyani population. Population from influenced minor factions will not migrate to your Arks; you're not allowed to find exiles, and when you "take over" a minor faction's system via assimilation, you just wipe out the system. Ultimately, the Devs have systematically nipped every gameplay path you could take to get alternate populations.

Lorewise, this is because the Vodyani are convinced their own physical state of being is a superior form of life - they believe they have a religious mandate to force all creatures in the galaxy to undergo the same physical conversion the Vodyani undertook in their origin story (in fact some of the Vodyani Heroes are canonically described as being converted from a completely different species, originally, than the "Vodyani" species which grew up on Tchinomy). When you're harvesting , you're partly killing off the population for their life-force, but through some of the actions depicted on minor-faction planets, it's implied that you're also converting them into Vodyani, copying their consciousnesses into Vodyani "Cloth" bodies.

Because of this mechanic, when you destroy an enemy system, it becomes a "hunting grounds" (a similar mechanic to that used when Pirates destroy a system); it can be instantly recovered by an opponent with a colony ship, but after you trigger the destruction, it will gradually lose population and buildings each turn until the system is back to a fully empty state. During this time, you can immediately dock an Ark, and your empire receives an  bonus for as long as the hunting ground status persists.

Vodyani also have the unique ability to 'brainwash' minor factions once they have reached full approval with them. This turns the target faction into a vassal state, granting continuous  and  benefits, and allows the Vodyani to receive their faction trait. It also locks them out of being possible for enemies to assimilate, either by quest or / assimilation-buyout, outside of a ground-invasion. This can be a (costly) shortcut in the race for faction traits compared to completing quests.

Finally, the Vodyani receive a hefty, flat 50% penalty to  production. This has several implications:

1. Population growth is most commonly achieved via the 'Holy Proliferation' mechanic, exchanging an increasing amount of  for additional population (the cost is tracked on Ark-level). However, even Vodyani have to eat, and if the  is not enough to sustain the higher population, it will die off, possibly instantly, negating any benefit from spending .
2. Manpower is significantly hampered especially in the early game, you will simply not produce enough to field any sort of significant invasion fleet. Where other factions can simply drop a few ships full of infantry on a planet and let them duke it out, Vodyani have to siege the defenders down (via  slugs and the like) in order to be able to take them when they're defenseless. Additionally, population-rich systems can easily spell doom for your invasion plans if they turn to drafting, so if you expect this to happen, it might be wise to drain their population a little with a handful of leechers beforehand, or use invasion tactics that have a high chance of killing civilian population (you monster!). An alternative way to handle this is to use the 'Military Penance' mechanic, exchanging  for , but again this should be weighted against the opportunity cost of more productive population via 'Holy Proliferation' or another Ark.
3. If you play as non-Vodyani and pick up a Vodyani exile from a curiosity somewhere, the game has cushioned the blow - it used to be in earlier patches that this one Vodyani would be enough to cut your entire system's  production in half; instead, what they've done now, is they've set it up so that this "50% malus" is proportionate the "the relative proportion of Vodyani population on a system". That is - if the system is comprised of 100% Vodyani pops, you'll get the full 50% malus, but if you've got only 1 Voyani pop and 49 other pops, you'll get a 1% malus.
4. A primary reason to be concerned about this is if you convert a Vodyani system using  - you'll receive a very large number of Vodyani in a system with no other pop types, so you'll be receiving the full 50% malus. (Note that if you convert them via , they'll 'scuttle' their Ark, and you'll be given a system with a floating 'wrecked Ark', as well as the accompanying  bonus, and a bunch of Vodyani settled on the ground. You can't, alas, use this as a way to cheese yourself into having a functional Ark whilst not playing Vodyani, proper - it seems that, code-wise the whole Ark mechanic is tied to the "Ship Bound" mechanic, and can't even function for a faction that doesn't have it. Rather than working on a system-by-system basis, it seems to work on an empire-by-empire basis.)