Vaulters: ES2 on easy mode (for 1.2.11)

After thorough research through many hours of gameplay on endless difficulty and MP both as and against Vaulters, I bring you yet another piece of... guide.
Prepare for cancer, I mean Vaulters unleashed! With my "pro" tips and Amplitude's questionable balancing logic, it is almost guaranteed you shall persevere and pwn those noobs with your incredible skill, but mostly your faction choice!
This is a fairly concise guide for low to mid tier players, high tier players already know and "don't need no guides". It is not recommended for people who can't read (lack of pretty pictures).
It's not as concise as usual cause I go to the extra detail to point out how strong (read ridiculously overpowered) certain aspects of the faction are.
As usual guide consists of:

• Reasons (not) to play the faction
  
• Explanation of traits and stuff
  
• First couple turns advice + vids
  
• General goals
  
• Quest choices

Guide is accompanied by a nerve wracking 3+ hour video of every stupid step throughout a succesfull MP game. Learn from my pain. Anything that is potentially missing in this guide should be made up for by watching the video, or just skipping through it quickly, don't have to watch it all, it is terribly long, cause that's how MP games with above minimal player count are.
Guide is customized to FAST speed, this is because you gotta go, go fast.

Intro, why (not) play Vaulters?

Good things about Vaulters:

• Snowballing since turn 1- Massive starting FIDSI which can easily turn into permanent score lead and turned into an easy victory and early
• Trivial gameplay - easy mode ommiting the usual mechanics such as outpost contests, worrying about ship transports, defending home systems at a turn's notice.
  
• Basically a GG pick
  
• Portals
  
• Not reliant on good luxury resource RNG roll
  
• Can choose home system (usually the single one provided, but can easily be best of 3 aswell)
  
• Absurdly broken hero ship mod (up to +40% fleet hp, gee, good job balance team)

Bad things about Vaulters:

• Can't perform paralel colonization (still can easily resort to alternative means of system gain)
  
• Not a very challenging gameplay, can be boring
  
• Basically a GG pick - also somewhat boring, you CAN get tired of winning and people tend not to overappreciate someone picking Vaulters
  
• Possibly nothing to do on turn 1 (but getting extra golden age time for it)

Salty Balance jibber jabber:

It is a very common practice in modern gamedesign to slightly overtune new content to provide more incentive for players to purchase it. This can be easily observed in MOBA games such as LoL or HotS where new heroes are purposely somewhat out of balance in order to give the early investors (at higher currency purchase price) an advantage.
This can easily be considered the case of Vaulters. While I am a DLC owner myself, I am just dazzled by the amount of advantage given to this race at little to no effort on the player's side which I have experienced first hand.
To sum it up, Vaulters are broken and should be your go to race if you want to enjoy the game with little skill involved making new player enjoy the game more easily and thus more likely to give it a positive review and be more pleased with their monetary expenditure for said DLC.
G2G Balance mod even hints at further Vaulters buff, so keep your fingers crossed!

TL:DR

Remember why no one playes with custom factions, cause everyone just plays ecologist vodyani and has a huge starting FIDSI and wins easily by pulling the early game advantage?

Meet Vaulters. That custom race bonus made a normal non custom, balanced, race.

Just do whatever, I mean you are vaulters, you already won.

• Abuse early game advantage for easy win.
  
• Abuse Portals for insane advantage throughout the game on top of your early game advantage.
  
• Use whicever strat you have more of for system upgrades, they are better than luxuries, mostly. I personally prefer titanium, cause hyperium is much more overused on ships and ship support mods.
  
• Refer to combat guide for combat tips.
  
• Refer to video for thorough gameplay explanation

Rest of the guide is a bit wordy, but it's mostly detailed salt about how OP vaulters are. So keep reading to either know what you can do, or know your enemy better.

Let's get on with it!

Traits and starting position

Want to get some lore background with close to 0 relevant information? Visit the official Wiki page![wiki.endless-space.com]

Traits:

• Golden age (involuntary nomads) = + 50 FIDS + 10 I + 25 approval + 25 mp, and you can also choose your home system - this trait easily spells GG, this race would need no other trait at all and would still probably be extremely competitive, you have even higher FIDSI than cravers and at no drawbacks at all! But wait, there is more!
  
• Material expertise - whoa, this is neat, even on normal resource abundance, you will be swimming in hyperium and titanium. This trait is incredibly strong enabling you to completely ignore RNG related to luxuries. And the use of strategics is actually better, netting you more versatile +40/+40 to FI or DS for overall +80 bonus compared to the usual non influence +60. To be fair, it does cost 6 more of the resource 6! Insane right? Better use redsang instead. Starting on T2 strategics (which are currently available a LOT sooner than T2 luxuries) which provide 50% stronger and balanced effect of the same nature as before, but at a less favourable price of 75. Again, a really strong trait on it's own, but wait, there is more!
  
• Corsairs - would you like to start with a T4 tech ability for free? Why not right? Well now you can. Yep. Who needs influence for war when you can be just as easily be early game annoying without it. No religious gov either, just a T4 tech bonus right from the start. For the sake of balancing. But wait, there is more!
  
• Core worlds - +10 approval while not overexpanded - With all this bonuses, all you really need is another early game boost! Well there it is. All yours.
  
• Some Sisters citizens - ok, extra approval is not bad. It's not really a gamebreaker, but neato bonus either way!
  
• Black Thumb II -15% food - oh my god, what are we going to do? Nothing hurts like producing only 85 food instead of 100 ...on turn 1! Don't worry, there is so much food coming from your golden age and following improvement advantage, you will run out of pop space pretty early, if you use titanium upgrades for your systems, you can ignore food upgrades till endgame. Trait has actually a strange way of helping you manage your influence income, being able to maintain laws more easily.
  
• Two technologies - the usual amount, but don't worry, with your science output, you can have any other starting tech you choose on the next turn... ^_^

Starting planet

Oh wait, there is none, you choose. If rng smiles on you, like on the picture provided, you are set for a golden start, if it doesn't, you will find your average starting planet nearby. You should probably focus on titanium and hyperium nodes as those are vital to your following expansion if you don't want to wait an extra turn to expand for... FREE.

• I forgot to mention that, your expansion is essentially free if you wait long enough. While some races need to spend a turns and industry on a colony ship, you get it for free. And of course colonization is instant, lol outposts are for plebs. However, if by a miracle some player might get an outpost down before you get to the system, press the block button, they lost the outpost, the ship, and you can take it afterwards.
  
• Oh and don't get into any fights with argosy, that's just stupid. It's just too fast with a ridiculous vision range to be getting caught.

Starting hero

Surprisingly, Vaulter heroes are not that superstrong in space battles, instead, they are more suitable to be dedicated system sitters, this goes hand in hand with the privateer harrasing theme, where you can not use heroes for your fleets.

• Your starter Overseer/Vaulter ensures early acces to strategic deposit strength increase, and has a backup option of producing T1 strategics at a rate which might seem tiny on fast, but can be probably overwhelmingly influential on slower games.
  
• In addition to that, they have a +20/30% science bonus at T2, which is quite strong especially because of being available so early.
  
• Native recruits for some neat defense bonuses can make a system near impossible to invade especially when combined with the pop bonus and finally a subtle but noticeable powerspike with the ultimate potential 15% science per strategic deposit on system and 5% on senate.
  
• The starting +10 ind per anomaly skill may seem irrelevant but can provide further bonus if you choose your starting system wisely.

Starting gov

• is Scientific/mil federation, federation provides additional value to you with your Core Worlds trait.
  
• If you thought 100 starting industry was not much, try it with -20% discount on things. You got it!
  
• They have a specific law alternative for Need to breed providing huge 500% influence buyout price increase on your system while only +10% food.
  
• Law combination of scientific and militaristic enables you to attain their highly influental endgame laws (Deadly Intent Bill + Mine's bigger) ASAP.
  
• There is also an improved version of the Influence wonder available to you, which you might want to consider investing in, as your population will just grow at enourmous rate, making the laws difficult to maintain, in spite of the bonus approval.

Ok, we got ourselves a pretty good race here right? Some would even call it OP, imbalanced, broken... etc. I know I would... BUT WAIT, THERE IS EVEN MORE!

Portals

Hehe, I have not mentioned portals much yet, have I?

• Ok, imagine a normal game of ES2, without the vaulters, now imagine you are thinking with... portals. It makes you really wish they implemented rally points already. You can crowdsource entire fleets at a single turn on any of your systems with a portal built. You think I am talking buyouts huh? Nah! Please! That costs dust! I am talking normal queue + instant reinforcement with portals!
  
• Oh someone dropped off an invasion on you and went away? Damn, you would want to conscript and waste your pop now, but you don't have to, you have portals!
  
• You would think you need multiple fleets to defend multiple systems... amateur, use portals instead! One fleet at all places at all times, whenever you need. Of course, moving through a portal wastes all movement, untill you get a tech so it does not. Skynet is real.
  
• Moving pop, annoying huh? Not with portals! Instantaneous pop movement without any threat of hostile intervention makes ecologist party something to actually consider...
  
• Portals are not free though, you have to build them (usually 2 turns with the Golden Age bonus) once you build them, you can easily fill that system up by dropping one pop of each of your systems. 16 dust upkeep is a pain, keep it in mind, unless the game had broken inflation system which rewards selling resources on market much more than actually producing dust and makes the racial production bonuses irrelevant.
  And remember, you can sell all your luxuries if you want, you have strategics instead.
  
• Portals would not be OP enough, without some extra researchable bonuses! YEEEY!

Affinity techs

Talking about research, let's mention some extra science bonuses from the science and explo tree, extra probe vision is neat, and available as early as turn 3 to you. Probably should get titanium and hyperium instead though.
Ice planet tech mod now provides +10% science by default
Fck-reality institute has been boosted up from 25 to 40% and paired up with argosy becoming a mobile portal. Yup. MOBILE PORTAL. thought portal is for defensive purposes only? Think big noob.
With all your traits, early hero bonuses, quest rewards and these techs, you can easily outresearch a sophon, if you were to opt in for hypeirum upgrade. This of course renders their racial partially useless in a game with you.

Mindset and goals, random tips and shower thoughts

Since you have the science output of a sophon, industry output of riftborn and still grow early pop faster than unfallen. What should your victory orientation be? I dunno, in my opinion having vaulters in game defeats the point of it as it takes the fun away, but since this is a Vaulters guide here we go...

Early game goals:

From the early game position of Vaulters you probably could... pretty much do midgame stuff.

• Achieve everything, that does not stop you from creating an early rush deathfleet with higher tier guns.
  
• Create an early rush 7 to 10 CP fleet that is unbeatable by anyone and ofc get tanks.
  
• Invade people as privateers and destroy them within 20 turns without even declaring a war.

But let us play with our food and just slow that down a bit... I mean, there is no hurry, we already won by picking Vaulters, right?

Alternate early game goals:

• Academy is nice, and since you have a additional bonus for off-lane movement tech, you could easily land it first, your only real competitor is lumeris, who would probably do it as a second colony aswell, but while you have it for free and can benefit instantly, they need to get 350 dust and probably have a useless outpost for 20 turns.
  
• That said, unless there are worthwhile resources, academy is usually not worth the extra effort, but it can be.
  
• Get more strategics, since you can are probably first to see T2 strategics, get those too, those are nice to have.
  
• Build all the competitive wonders, since you picked your system and potentially start with strategics just as riftborn would, you should have what it takes... waste some time cause you can, I mean why not.
  
• Don't forget to moan a lot about your poor starting system, oh wait, you chose a different one, lol.

Endgame goals

Since your midgame is in your early game, let's discuss the endgame goals right away.

• Create a deathball fleet, which no one can contest cause they are in midgame.
  
• Make friends, friends make supremacy victory faster.

Do not forget to boast about your mad skills in an empty lobby after everyone has left because of how stupidly OP your race is.

Interesting shenanigans to pull - primarily boarding

• Since you are the only race to have an access to T2 boarding mod, try to make use of it. It might even be worth the extra manpower invested.
  
• To make best of your boarding mods, use crew killing cards and optionally even guns. What do you know, might board a ship or two, before you massacre them.
  
• If you do not have the invasion "conquest" reward weapon mod, use boarding mods on heroes, where they net you most value per investment, since you do not have to pay MPwr for them again.

First couple turns + vid

Ok first of all:
Before facerolling, it is advisable to wrap your face into a bubblewrap to protect it. Ok, we are ready to play Vaulters, moving on...

I would add the improvise, adapt, overcome meme, but you don't really have to.
Since you might not start on T1, this guide assumes you do. If you don't, don't worry, you are OP and have a bonus for waiting that extra turn.
Turn 1:

• Try getting a nice starting system with T1 strategics, blackjack and hookers are optional.
  
• Assing hero to fleet and search curiosities.
  
• Spam probes, your scout ship can have almost all slots made probes, give it a retrofit and repeat.
  
• Create fleet from the probing ship to isolate hero, give hero probes and send her somewhere to do curiosities. Cause XP.
  
• Queue up upgrades and colonizations, do not waste a single bit of that sweet starting 100 industry.
  
• Screw those default upgrades, grab those T1 instead, xenoindustral blah blah will net you + 30 indy if you landed on fertile.
  
• Get T1 strat tech either titanium, or whichever you have available.
  
• Enable the scientifi law for discount on industry to further enhance your starting boost.

T2:

• Send the probing ship to probe too, probably in the other way
  
• Befriend a minor faction, if you find any, preferably purely by 10 influence praises and scanning, watch out warmonger factions engage once they have ships and are below 50 relationship. Try to get them through quests, if they suck, just invade.
  
• Grab probe range and offlane movement Tech and then research towards system upgrades I suggest titanium, but hyperium works nice aswell.
  
• I would probably recommend science upgrade quest choice, since you do not really need ship/mp upgrade in the early game.

T5

• Assign hero to system, unless there is more to scan close by. I guess the titanium skill can be chosen, if you have no other preference.

T10

• Chill and tech up, keep colonizing new stuff, try to pinpout those T2 strats.
  
• If you want to, start getting a fleet, 2 supports for movement and 5 pew pew work fine. You can easily land T2 beams and those will work fine.
  
• Don't forget about converting MP to tanks.
  
• If possible and interesting, expand across multiple consellations, remember to be thinking with portals.

T20

• 10 Command Point cap is nice. Focus on that while you are have those T2 beams, right?
  
• Who needs militaristic party and free wardec, when you have privateers, annoy the hell out of those other people.
  
• Good time to think about those T3 lasers and extra slots on T1 ships.

T30

• Ideally should have the aircraft tech, choose one T2 ship version to focus and upgrade, rush the AoE mod with the extra slot version of it. (AoE weapons broken atm)

Watch vid, get cancer and do not forget to have fun! Also subscribe for the possibility of more cancer.

Fleet setup and combat related information

Since this is not so unique across the factions, perhaps it would be smarter and less cluttery to use another guide for it?
You bet ya!
Click here for combat stuff, fittings, setups and combat advice.

Quests

Questline is somewhat non-commital where almost every step enables you to choose one of two options regardless of previous choice. So there is no need to worry that little vaulter head of yours with knowing any questlines. Just again, make sure to protect face with bubblewrap while facerolling.

Notable quest rewards are:
+ science per strategic deposit upgrade
hero ship mod for +10% fleet hp (use on 2+ slots for 20%+ fleet hp up to 40% fleet hp from hero ship design only) did I say vaulters were very balanced faction already?
Somewhat strategically expensive but still +50% industry and 500 MP cap unique system upgrade.

Playing against vaulters

You can defeat noob vaulters by rushing them early on.
Of course they have a huge early game advantage, even higher than cravers, so every decent player will kill you easily. What is worse is that the portal system makes most aggresive attempts fall flat, because they can simply react instantly.

To defeat an experienced vaulter, you just have to hope to survive long enough to create your own deathball of a fleet and then get lucky in the clash, by lucky I mean dying to the +20% fleet hp mod or having a stronger fleet hero than they do. But even then, by the time you have antimatter guns, they probably have quadrinx ones, so hehe nope.

Closing statements + links to possibly better guides

Vaulters are meh.
Optimal use would be giving noobs a fighting chance.
You should totally play Vaulters if

• You don't know the game well yet, and mechanics such as producing a colony ship, playing with outposts and dealing with distance make you uncomfortable and you need training wheels on your space bike. (+50 FIDS training wheels to be exact)
  
• You are a very VERY very special individual or simply not a smart (wo)man.
  
• You like to pretend you know how to play the game well, while you let the faction choice do it for you.
  
• Played rogue in Vanilla World of Warcraft and made a lots of videos about world pvp and felt like an uber skilled ninja, while the same could be achieved without any real gear, simply because of the class design.

You probably should not play Vaulters if

• You want to get at least little bit close to a balanced game considering all the RNG circumstances.
  
• You want to learn how to play better.
  
• You like an actual challenge.

Of this guide was supposed to teach you anything, it would be, "just do not play Vaulters ffs...".
I honestly look forward to the days when the MP lobbies are not "either all vaulters or no vaulters", but G2G balance mod government changes hint at further indirect buffs to Vaulters. So not yet.

There are other guides to look at if you still like Vaulters!

Last but not least, if you really hated my guide and found it too heavy on the detailed relevant facts and an actual guidance, I would gladly refer you to this guide by Ruzen.
His guide is better in ...aspects.
It takes a different view on the word guide and all, but well within means of the word's definition.
When I said it could use improvement providing a huge list of pointers, he called me edgy and immature, which is why I mention it here, to kinda prove his point. I am.
I am also kinda butthurt about his dismissive statement.
It has pretty Vaulter pictures too, so check it out.

There are other guides to look at, if you were convinced that Vaulters are lame!

Like this Lumeris guide or this Horatio guide, both or which are somewhat extreme opposites of faction balancing spectrum when compared to Vaulters.

I (dis)agree with what this guide suggests!

Please refer to this G2G forum post[www.games2gether.com] and voice your opinion. Thank you.

[Jaggid Edje]

Lol, okay, that makes sense then.
I'm having a lot of fun with the race; being a pirate is awesome and as long as my opponents don't try to crush me before I get a few more systems, I'll have quality over quantity colonies and eventually be able to win this.

[koxsos]

Times have changed, vaulters are now more reasonable and while still somewhat strong, rely on the RNG of the game just as much as everyone.

[Jaggid Edje]

I'm new..just started my second game and picked Vaulters having NO idea what they were even all about other than I liked the text of their description.

I'm on an endless game modded to be like x6 slower than normal and at turn 200...went looking for a guide to see if there were things I was missing about the race I picked and read this....got a good chuckle. Wasn't what I was looking for but it was funny.

Not sure if game patches since you wrote this have nerfed vaulters, or if playing with the super slow-mo mods just make them a lot weaker, but they have been hard as he** to succeed as in my game. Nearest enemy civ had 9 systems colonized before I could afford to even get a 2nd one.

[Krazee]

Funny guide. Just found the Vaulters in my most recent game. Thought you might enjoy the name of their home system ;) https://imgur.com/ez8c1dr

[koxsos]

As far as the facts go, numbers have been adjusted, but the guidelines still apply.
I am somewhat hesitant whether to update it now, or wait for another post-dlc patch which will "remedy" some issues as of now.
Now if you want to go crying over outdated guides the within the week of new DLC release, I suggest you visit my other guides aswell. Links are at the end.
But let me spoil it for you, they also state for which patch they are.

[koxsos]

You mean like (for 1.2.11) in the guide title?
I mean how much more obvious would you have it seriously? If you can't read that I can't help you.

[Hex: Onii-Chan]

If the guide is outdated, then update it. If you know that half of it is bs by now, then fix it. It's your guide and your responsibility. Or take it down. Or add a disclosure.

[koxsos]

To further adress the "simply proves that you are looking for excuses as to why you lose", this was written in the times when everyone just picked vaulters or there was a no vaulters rule, as it really did guarantee an unfair advantage over the other races which has since then been nerfed.
Would you like to perhaps co-author an update for the guide from your perspective of clearly "superior game knowledge"?

[koxsos]

As to the influence point, may I dare quote:
"There is also an improved version of the Influence wonder available to you, which you might want to consider investing in, as your population will just grow at enourmous rate, making the laws difficult to maintain, in spite of the bonus approval."
Looking back at it, post nerfs and all I should probably recommend this as a must have, as there might be some changes since that DLCs release which the guide is actually meant for and not updated since.

[koxsos]

I would like to draw your attention to the "playing against vaulters" part of the guide and also suggest an actual read of all the relevant bonuses given to the race and how to use them prior to passing judgement of "whining" from a position of someone who says "speed is irrelevant to war".