The Umbral Choir/Traits

Observers and infiltrators, the Umbral Choir seeks to understand--and heal--the galaxy.

About
Gameplay
**Traits**
Ships
Strategy

## Traits

### Abduction Details

There are two ways to abduct Sleepers:

* Hack a system with Sleepers in it; one of the hack results steals a single Sleeper from the system.
* Conquer a system with Sleepers in it; the middle "Pillage" option is replaced by "Abduct" for you, which steals *all* the Sleepers in the system.

In either case, if you have Umbral Choir pops in Sanctuaries on the system, you can dismiss the Hack/Conquer dialog, convert the sanctuary pops into Sleepers, and then immediately abduct them via the Hack/Conquer dialog; there's no need to manually settle Sleepers on a system in advance.

Abducted Sleepers *transform* your Nexus's Umbral Choir pops, one-for-one, into special Umbral Shadow pops (so there is no need to keep pop slots open on your home system). These pops consume twice as much food, but produce twice the FIDSI. If your Nexus is fully converted already, excess abducted Sleepers are converted directly into resources. (TBD: what/how much?)

## Assimilation Traits

As noted above, when you do assimilate a minor faction, you will gain its assimilation trait, even though the faction is otherwise "deleted". There are a few of these that are quite noteworthy because either they're something whose "per planet" modifier works on your Sanctuaries, or because they're particularly useful for the UC's own design.

##### Exploration-related

The UC are extremely good curiosity explorers, because not only do they have some of the best explorer ships (for that purpose) in the game, but they also are able to freely enter enemy space and explore their systems without getting shot at.

* Eyder "**Relic Peddlers**": +5 Dust on Systems per Curiosity Discovered on Empire
* Pulsos "**Thinkers and Tinkers I**":  +1 Industry on Systems per Curiosity Discovered on Empire

##### Hacking-related

There's only one hacking-related minor faction. Both of the boosts they give are quite desirable to the UC, especially the hacking-speed one, because if you get enough hacking speed, it's possible to beat traces on shorter routes, which means the overall speedup (by simply being allowed to use the shorter route at all) ends up often being a factor-of-two rather than the actual speed boost the trait gives.

* Kalmat "**Evolutionary Algorithms**": -10% Bandwidth costs
* Kalmat "**Twitch Infiltrators**": +10% Hacking speed

##### Manpower-related

The UC has *severe* Manpower problems (probably an order-of-magnitude worse than everyone else), due to three reasons: a severe, inherent malus they're given (-75% Manpower growth), a very high demand (to stock the Manpower of each Sanctuary, wherein each single sanctuaried planet costs 200 )Manpower, and also because they have extremely low Food growth for a large part of the game.

* Tikanan "**Infinite Soldiers**": +100 Manpower income on Empire. This assimilation trait will essentially solve this problem during the early game.
* Yuusho "**Mud Stompers**": -10% Manpower cost per Troops on Ground Battles. Not nearly as impactful as the Tikanan law, but anything helps.

##### Sanctuary-related

Quite a few assimilation traits work on planets with sanctuaries. As a rule, it seems that traits which provide  boosts do **not** work on sanctuaries, but the others do.

* Amblyr "**Profitable Exploitations**": +40 Dust on planets with Strategic Resources.
* Galvran "**Mines over Matter**": +40 Science on planets with Strategic Resources.
* Galvran "**Cryo Mining**": +20 Science on Cold Planets, +25% Strategic Resource income. Besides working on Sanctuaried planets, this also works on all of your Crescents - they're all "Cold".
* Pilgrims "**Anomalous Science**": +5 Science per Anomaly
* Sefaloros "**Workspace Oddity**": +25 Industry per Anomaly on Systems.
* Sowers "**Soil Healers**": +25 Food on sterile, +2 FIDS on planets with reduced anomalies. Besides working on Sanctuaried Planets, this conveniently fits the criterion of all of your Crescents in the Nexus - they're all "Sterile".

##### Nexus-related

There are a few assimilation bonuses of note due to them affecting your Nexus (i.e., your primary system).

* Kal'Tik'Ma "**Stalwart Stoics**": +10 Approval on Sterile, -25% Overcolonization. You have 5 planets in your Nexus, and this is essentially a +50 Approval boost. It's a pretty big deal, because - since the Nexus is your only source of either one - the Food and Influence malus from low Approval has an outsized effect on the UC.
* Sowers "**Soil Healing**" (see above)
* Galvran "**Cryo Mining**" (see above)

## Population Traits

 Increases Pacifist Political Output.
 Political Traits
  political opinion more impacted by  events.

Super Population
 Increases Pacifist Political Output.
 Political Traits
  political opinion more impacted by  events.

## AI Personality Traits

* **Pacifist:** This empire will sign contracts more easily, try to maintain alliances and will favor peace.
* **Isolationist:** This empire will protect itself against economic war.
* **Restless:** This empire will explore more actively and patrol its territory.

## Unique Laws

Because of the unique playstyle of the Umbral Choir, a few of the laws are replaced with alternate variants better suited to their mechanics:

The number in parenthesis (%) represents the law effect with a republic government.

## Hero-Skill Mechanics

Because of the unique playstyle of the Umbral Choir, it's critical to know the implications of hero abilities - specifically in terms of which abilities affect Sanctuaries or not. Most hero skills for the UC are the same as they are with a "vanilla" faction, and don't list any fine print as to whether their effects do or do not affect Sanctuaries. **Some skills have been outright replaced**, and have clear descriptions of what they do on sanctuaries.

Any skills with special interactions are listed with an asterisk ✶.

####  Counselor:

* **Person of Means** - Gives +10  on System, and +10  per Sterile Planet. The +10  on System part works on Sanctuaries.
* **Public Relations Expert** - Gives 50  per trading company as a senate skill. This does **not** apply to the faux subsidiaries on sanctuaries. Also gives +40  and +10%  "on System"; neither of these affect Sanctuaries.
* **Blue Sky Speculator** - Gives +60  on System. It fully works on sanctuaries.
* **The Joy Initiative** - This does work - it's specifically rebuilt for Sanctuaries. The vanilla version hard-sets the system's approval to "Ecstatic", the highest value, and reduces  upkeep by 20%. This version instead gives +5  on your home system for every sanctuary. Since the UC, through a trait, end up receiving -20  per  overcolonization point, this isn't a silver bullet that solve all your happiness problems, but it strikes a hell of a blow (in a normal-sized game, this can easily net a fairly outrageous number like +80  or something).

####  Eusocial:

* **Hive Mind** - Gives +2  per . Does **not** apply to pops living on sanctuaries.
* **Forced Labor** - Gives +20 , and +20  per planet in the system. Part of this does work - the industry part. Each sanctuary system will give you an addition +20 industry.
* **Ultra HouseProud** - Reduces the system's dust upkeep  by 40%. Does not apply to sanctuaries, since they don't have upkeep.
* **Rousing Orator** - Gives +2 or 4  per . Does **not** apply to pops living on sanctuaries.

## Potential Population Quest Rewards

These are the possible rewards for a quest **any** faction can receive simply for having >10 Umbral Choir population on at least two systems.

##### What's This?

* **Relay Protocol**: (Empire Improvement) +10% Hacking Speed on Nodes on Empire (requires that you have a Sanctuary on the academy system when the quest triggers)
* **Deep Space Research**: +5  per turn, per CP, on fleets led by a hero.
* **Engine Masking** : (Empire Improvement) +2 move speed on cloaked ships
* **Satellite Reengineering** : (Empire Improvement) +10 Bandwidth per Maximum Hacking Operations.

## Potential Unique Faction Quest Rewards

These are the unique rewards (as opposed to ones which are just randomly-chosen strategics/luxuries/one-time-FIDSI-boosts/etc) which only this faction has access to, earned by completing their faction quest. Rewards in different columns are mutually exclusive, only accessible on their branch of faction quest.

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