Activating the Contact Victory Beacon

[Eagle Pursuit]

Once you build the Beacon for the Contact Victory, you have to activate it. There isn't anything in the game that tells you how to activate it, at least that I could find in 15 minutes of scouring the UI and civilopedia.

I did eventually figure it out, and I'll share it here so that others don't get frustrated like I did.

1) Select the Beacon on the map.

2) In the lower left corner of the screen is the interface bar for selected objects. You normally see it for units with stats and a picture of the unit. In the case of the Beacon, it's blank for some reason.

3) Above that interface bar is one tiny button that is nearly transparent. It's a stylized image of the Beacon. It's very easy to miss because Beacon button just looks like a needle. At first I thought it was just a weird bit of UI art.

4) Click it! Oh, before you click it, you need to have 1000 Energy saved up. I gleaned that much out of the Civilopedia.

5) Once you click it, it takes your 1000 Energy and all net Energy income for the next 30 turns until Victory. So if you're in the middle of a war or expecting one, don't count on rush-buying units unless you're sitting on a fat pile of Energy. Have your defenses ready beforehand.

This is definitely something that I hope gets cleared up in a patch. It really shouldn't have shipped like this. There needs to be documentation in the quest text as to how to go about activating the Beacon. Also the Beacon control bar should have some indication about what purpose it serves.

 

[Lanth]

The exodus gate uses a similar mechanic for spawning human colonists which many people miss.

But taking all of your net EPT for 30 turns? That's the roughest one by far:
Supremacy - send 1000 strength of units back to earth, 1 per turn (so ~10 turns if you can afford to rush-buy the biggest affinity units in the game)
Purity - settle 20 human colonists into their own settlements, 1 per turn
Harmony - build the mind flower and wait for it to tick down. Each Mind Stem or Xeno-something built in your cities reduces the time needed by 1 turn.

So purity and harmony shouldn't really interrupt any war your involved with. Supremacy ironically requires you to shrink your army; if you can hold the front lines while rush-buying in back it may not be too bad. But taking up all of your energy for 30 turns is quite punishing if you're in a war.

 

[Dasta]

I would also argue that contact "can be" one of the fastest victories to achieve if you don't have that energy drain. I accidentally made contact at turn like... 115ish? Then you just have to build beacon and energy feed it. Boom. Done. 40 turns. But that early in the game, you probably don't have the energy to win yet. So at least it's forcing you to either wait, or go hard energy farm to get 1k+spare.

Maybe they should balance the drain a bit though. Like maybe have it eat half of your excess EPT? So you still have an energy trickle? So it handicaps and discourages war, but you can still getbsome rainy day funds in case of a surprise?

 

[Mustakrakish]

Nah, I think eating all excess EPT + 1000 is fine, a nice "challenge"... Just did and it was a total breeze. If it's only half EPT, then it's not a challenge at all.

 

[Mercade]

Although it's a bit weird that once you've switched it on, you cannot switch it off again.
Obviously some others declared war once I put it on, and it'd be rather nice to be able to switch it off while dealing with the enemies at the heat of the battle. I wouldn't even mind to pay a fee again to switch it on a 2nd time.