Bio-Ascension is unplayable, Machine Age makes it more obvious

[Dragatus]

1. Micro-hell is why I called it unplayable. The purpose of the ascension is genetic modification. You are saying ignore all the species with lower pop counts, that is conceeding my point which is that you can't effectively use this ascension for what it is designed for (modding species) without massive micro-hell. Even with that, you cannot consolidate templates without purging due to other ascension and non-removable traits that have already been listed.

Eh, that sounds a little bit like you're more interested in being right than having a discussion, but maybe I'm misreading your intention. The thing is that it isn't quite set in stone anywhere that bio-ascension is about modifying every single pop of every single species in your empire and empirically the two main benefits of it are clone vats and getting Erudite on your leaders, while toying around with your dominant species is still very much a thing too. If you set that as your expectations, bio-ascension is very playable.

All that said you still very much do have a point in that psionic and synthetic both allow you to easily apply their benefits to your entire population through assimilation, while bio and cyber don't. That's indisputable. I'd argue cyber actually got the worse of it since you can't just clear the design and slap the same 3-4 traits on every species and it's been clearly designed with the intention of double-dipping into bonuses. I don't see anything about Machine Age changing that fundamental aspect of cyber ascension either, even if we will get shiny new bells & whistles on top.

At the same time I'm wary of using assimilation into your dominant species as the solution. It would just make necrophages/bio-synths out of every empire that bio-ascends. What I'd prefer is some kind of real auto-modding mechanic. The auto-modding we're getting in 3.12 is misnamed IMO. It's actually just a series of generalist species traits that lets individual pops get a bonus to the job they're actually doing. You still have to manually modify a species to have it. What I want is automated species modification where pops will genuinely modify their species. However, it would have to be done in a way that doesn't cause the species list to explode.

The simplest method would be that pops who are undergoing auto-modding check if there is a subspecies available in the empire that uses all available trait points and turn into that one. Failing that they could find the subspecies that has the fewest unspent trait points and change to that. That way at least we could modify a species once and any outdated variants that later show up in our empire would automatically adapt. To go a step further and solve the issue completely auto-modding could maybe be allowed to also spend all excess trait points and create a brand new species, but it might be best to lock that behind a policy. The policies could then be somethig like:
1. No Automated Modification
2. Automated Assimilation
3. Unchecked Self-modification

Now on to getting the AI to not make so many subspecies, I think the first thing that needs to be implemented is the concept of trait upgrades. For example we currently have Strong and Very Strong. On a conceptual level Very Strong is an upgrade of Strong, but on a mechanical level they're two distinct traits that are simply mutually exclusive, like Strong and Weak. When you're modifiying a Strong species you have to first remove Strong, only then can you add Very Strong. Which actually means you can't go from Strong to Very Strong on a species unless you bio-ascend even if you get enough trait points to cover the difference in cost. What I have in mind is that the Strong trait could have a line that says "ugrades_to = trait_very_strong". And then when modifying a Strong species you'd be able to pick Very Strong, which would automatically replace Strong and the affair would cost you 2 trait points (3 for gaining Very Strong, -1 for losing Strong).

The next stage would be that more or less every basic species trait (except maybe Venerable) would upgrade to some advanced trait. This might require redesigning some existing advanced traits and adding a few new ones. Multiple basic traits could also have a shared upgrade. For example Intelligent and Talented could both upgrade to Erudite. A trait might also go through multiple upgrades. For example Adaptive could upgrade to Extremely Adaptive which would finally upgrade to Robust.

With all that in palce, the AI could be taught to first remove all negative traits, then add Erudite and the new "auto-modding" trait, then spend the rest of of the trait points on upgrading all remaining positive basic traits to their advanced version. If it then still has any trait points left over it could spend them on other advanced traits. This could be done fairly easily through the use of AI weights on species traits, which is a thing that's already in the game, though vanilla makes very limited use of it.

AI weights could probably also be used to make the AI pick cyborg traits that double down on existing species traits. For example if a species is Industrious the AI that could increase the weight of Power Drills. This would then reliably make AI empires give their Industrious cyborgs Power Drills, leading to a smaller number of designs than now when it'll add traits pretty much randomly.

AI weights could also be used to teach the AI to modify species in accordance to their species rights. For example the Erudite trait could be set to have 0 weight for pops whose traits and species rights block them from working Researcher jobs and becoming leaders.

 

[Shark7]

The simplest method would be that pops who are undergoing auto-modding check if there is a subspecies available in the empire that uses all available trait points and turn into that one. Failing that they could find the subspecies that has the fewest unspent trait points and change to that. That way at least we could modify a species once and any outdated variants that later show up in our empire would automatically adapt. To go a step further and solve the issue completely auto-modding could maybe be allowed to also spend all excess trait points and create a brand new species, but it might be best to lock that behind a policy. The policies could then be somethig like:
1. No Automated Modification
2. Automated Assimilation
3. Unchecked Self-modification

I like where this is going, but we certainly need to be able to designate with sub-species we'd like to auto-mod into. And be able to choose multiple for those situations that warrant it (IE I want a sub-species with Erudite for tech worlds, but very strong for fortress worlds, etc). It would certainly help the on the player's end if I weren't constantly having to go fix the mess created by the AI sub-species spamming manually.

 

[Shark7]

didn't even try to claim it worked in all cases ... it'd work it cases where you'd previously would've had seperate sub-species for the various jobs.

It's the reason I advocate for being able to remove those traits, but not add them. That way you can clean up the sub-species list, but you will lose access to pops with the traits you remove and can't re-add.

 

[Dragatus]

I like where this is going, but we certainly need to be able to designate with sub-species we'd like to auto-mod into. And be able to choose multiple for those situations that warrant it (IE I want a sub-species with Erudite for tech worlds, but very strong for fortress worlds, etc).

So in addition to the growing species and assembling species there'd be a 3rd little window where we'd pick a species for the planet that auto-modding would try to emulate as closely as possible? Something along those lines?

 

[Dr. B]

However, you run into a problem when you have sub-species that have un-removable traits. Once you have a trait that on a sub-species that can't be removed via gene modding, you are stuck with it...especially if that particular sub-species is a branch of your founding species (can't purge your own species after all).

The solution to this situation is to make sure that all trait can at least be removed from a template. That way all the sub-species can be merged into one species. I have made my own mod to the game to allow for this, but honestly it should be something that is possible in the vanilla game (and TBH it may have been fixed and I just don't know it, since I have not played the game without mods in a long time).

The rubber band solution to this founder species problem would be to move the offending pops to a separate planet, give them independence and... crack it.

Problem solved.
(They asked for it.)

 

[Taritu]

The great advantage of gene tailoring over cybernetics is the ability to remove positive traits. But yeah, it can wind up a mess. Even pre machine-age I think cybernetic is superior in that some of the cyber traits are good and cheap and you get +40 lifespan for free where you have to pay points for it with gene editing, but I never feel underpowered when I go gene.

What is irritating about psi for me is not the lack of population expansion, but lack of access to increased age for leaders. The new leadership system makes high level (old) leaders matter a lot.

 

[Zeelilus]

This works right up until you allow non-starter species into your empire via any of Conquest, Refugees, Migration, or Events. The moment you do that your going to get a whole bunch of extra species you have to mod every time you acquire a new one and constantly run projects to fix as they trickle in.

Fixed that for you.

You can add any number of "musts" and "have to's" that you want, but they're all just self imposed RP. You want Erudite on your rulers but other than that you don't have to do *anything* to the trickle of other pops in your empire. At all. The game doesn't crash because 3 of your 15 pops working alloys don't have the ideal traits.

 

[Shark7]

The rubber band solution to this founder species problem would be to move the offending pops to a separate planet, give them independence and... crack it.

Problem solved.
(They asked for it.)

Neutron Sweep is my preferred solution, but yeah, pretty much.

 

[Shark7]

So in addition to the growing species and assembling species there'd be a 3rd little window where we'd pick a species for the planet that auto-modding would try to emulate as closely as possible? Something along those lines?

Something along those lines.

However, this wouldn't have to be a bio-ascension only thing. Everybody gets it for robots. Synthetics assimilate pops anyway so they already have it. Psionics might be a stretch, but remain a possibility.

I think the main thing is that what most of us really wants is just fewer sub-species per game overall. The AI is the real problem since it spams them out in ludicrous numbers.

So I counted my last game which was finished. Cross Breeding is disabled. At end game NOT counting species I made myself or any of the robots. There were 391 sub-species in game....all AI created bio-ascension sub-species.

I also looked at a current game that is about mid-game and there are already 20 AI created sub-species not counting robots (I have not yet created a single sub-species).

This is the reason I think a lot of us really want consolidation. There was one species with (IIRC) 20 sub-species by my count in the 391 game. All AI created.

And as an after-thought, you can see why the AI lags behind in tech if its using all its research to do sub-species like this. Fixing this might alleviate the AI tech lag some as well.

 

[nweismuller]

The proliferation of AI sub-species also makes the terrible population growth selection mechanics even worse. The game arbitrarily wants to force equal populations of all species in your empire on every planet, which is insane and makes it look like your primary species just stops growing. With extra AI subspecies, you have extra populations that want to equalise on your planets. And yes, population controls is a solution, but frankly I'd prefer the population growth mechanics to make any damn sense at all. They're so bad that I, who is trying to play an otherwise friendly corporate empire (Fanatic Pacifist/Egalitarian- which, yes, is part of the reason I don't want to do population controls) that's aiming for a Benevolent Experience for its people am going 'soft xenophobe' in simply refusing to sign any migration treaties or otherwise let xeno population in, as the 'not as bad as population controls' option for me. Which is terrible, because I actually would prefer a multispecies empire with free migration over the borders, the population growth mechanics are just that painful.

Any species that get into my empire will damn well get equal rights and liberties as anybody else, but the dead stop on my main species' population growth once a single refugee gets in looks more like artificially limiting the reproductive rights of my own people, and jerks me straight out of my being convinced that reproductive controls aren't in place. I want an Egalitarian empire that just lets populations do their own thing to look like one, not look like artificial promotion of xenos.

 

[GhostDanny]

Necrophage, just turn all biological pops into your species bar maybe one which is for growth and changed into more of you via the building. ^^

 

[Beauty Nova]

1. Limit the number of sub-species per main species that can be created by an empire. The most sub-species I have ever created for a single main species in one game is 4, so to me it seems like a decent number to limit it to.

As a bio ascension enjoyer one of my empires makes a dozen or so templates of one species and mods between them as needed.

Such a restriction would be a huge blow to my playstyle.

 

[Ikael]

It is not unplayable, it is just that its main advantage lies in obtaining absurd amounts of organic pop assembly via cloning vats.

However, playing "as intended" (that is, genemodding tons of species and implementing cool unique bio traits) offers very minimal advantages at the cost of lots of micro.

But that is more due to how the genemodding interface works, united to how little impact most racial traits have (see also: Xenocompatibility).

 

[secretagentguy]

So just don't do that.

Player attention is a finite resource. You will likely get better RoI on it by optimizing planets than by running hundreds of tiny genemodding projects to make sure every individual refugee gets moved to the main template for that species. Just set your default rights to population controls and only mod the incoming pops when there are enough of a particular species to be worth the effort.

Psionic is not a pop modding ascension. It's best to set everything to Assimilation and then mostly ignore all their base traits, because the +40ish% from being psionic with Divine Conduit Telepaths makes all the other traits barely relevant.

That you can't exert any real control is a good reason not to try.

"So just don't do that." is not a good solution to an unworkable system. It is an indicator that the system needs significant improvement. If there was a button in an automobile on the dashboard that made it explode, you wouldn't leave the button in the automobile and sell it as is. You also wouldn't add a "Just don't do that" warning label. Its a bad design that compromises the point of the origin and there are some relatively easy solutions described above. The silly part is how easy use of assimilation and some minor tweaks would fix the playability big time while not actually "buffing" it. I'm not looking for a buff, I'm looking for QoL.

 

[Carl_Bar]

So just don't do that.

Player attention is a finite resource. You will likely get better RoI on it by optimizing planets than by running hundreds of tiny genemodding projects to make sure every individual refugee gets moved to the main template for that species. Just set your default rights to population controls and only mod the incoming pops when there are enough of a particular species to be worth the effort.

Psionic is not a pop modding ascension. It's best to set everything to Assimilation and then mostly ignore all their base traits, because the +40ish% from being psionic with Divine Conduit Telepaths makes all the other traits barely relevant.

That you can't exert any real control is a good reason not to try.

Fixed that for you.

You can add any number of "musts" and "have to's" that you want, but they're all just self imposed RP. You want Erudite on your rulers but other than that you don't have to do *anything* to the trickle of other pops in your empire. At all. The game doesn't crash because 3 of your 15 pops working alloys don't have the ideal traits.

Way to completely miss the point both of you.

This isn't really about optimisation. It would be nice to be able to do that, but its way too much work. When i do go non-synth ascension i just try to get all my pops roughly on par with one another vuia trait modding and leave it at that. Its not as powerful as Synthetics overall or anywhere near the peak of what is possibble but it works and isn't completely impossible.


The real point i'm getting at though is that the traits of your species is a major part of customising your build. The more varied your actual empire population becomes the more you lose of that and eventually you can end up in a situation, (especially as psionic), where its completely lost.

Optimisation mostly becomes an issue if you want to make use of traits like delicious or nerve-stapled, or similar highly spelecised traits you can't put on your whole species. They're some of the key powers granted by bio ascension but are extremly difficult to make use of without it becoming an impossible mess. Also neither of them makes sense for egalitarians, which feels weird.

But the real point is how your species is setup is a key part of your ability to customise your empire, and its a huge pain to use as anything but synthetics.

 

[secretagentguy]

Eh, that sounds a little bit like you're more interested in being right than having a discussion, but maybe I'm misreading your intention. The thing is that it isn't quite set in stone anywhere that bio-ascension is about modifying every single pop of every single species in your empire and empirically the two main benefits of it are clone vats and getting Erudite on your leaders, while toying around with your dominant species is still very much a thing too. If you set that as your expectations, bio-ascension is very playable.

All that said you still very much do have a point in that psionic and synthetic both allow you to easily apply their benefits to your entire population through assimilation, while bio and cyber don't. That's indisputable. I'd argue cyber actually got the worse of it since you can't just clear the design and slap the same 3-4 traits on every species and it's been clearly designed with the intention of double-dipping into bonuses. I don't see anything about Machine Age changing that fundamental aspect of cyber ascension either, even if we will get shiny new bells & whistles on top.

At the same time I'm wary of using assimilation into your dominant species as the solution. It would just make necrophages/bio-synths out of every empire that bio-ascends. What I'd prefer is some kind of real auto-modding mechanic. The auto-modding we're getting in 3.12 is misnamed IMO. It's actually just a series of generalist species traits that lets individual pops get a bonus to the job they're actually doing. You still have to manually modify a species to have it. What I want is automated species modification where pops will genuinely modify their species. However, it would have to be done in a way that doesn't cause the species list to explode.

The simplest method would be that pops who are undergoing auto-modding check if there is a subspecies available in the empire that uses all available trait points and turn into that one. Failing that they could find the subspecies that has the fewest unspent trait points and change to that. That way at least we could modify a species once and any outdated variants that later show up in our empire would automatically adapt. To go a step further and solve the issue completely auto-modding could maybe be allowed to also spend all excess trait points and create a brand new species, but it might be best to lock that behind a policy. The policies could then be somethig like:
1. No Automated Modification
2. Automated Assimilation
3. Unchecked Self-modification

Now on to getting the AI to not make so many subspecies, I think the first thing that needs to be implemented is the concept of trait upgrades. For example we currently have Strong and Very Strong. On a conceptual level Very Strong is an upgrade of Strong, but on a mechanical level they're two distinct traits that are simply mutually exclusive, like Strong and Weak. When you're modifiying a Strong species you have to first remove Strong, only then can you add Very Strong. Which actually means you can't go from Strong to Very Strong on a species unless you bio-ascend even if you get enough trait points to cover the difference in cost. What I have in mind is that the Strong trait could have a line that says "ugrades_to = trait_very_strong". And then when modifying a Strong species you'd be able to pick Very Strong, which would automatically replace Strong and the affair would cost you 2 trait points (3 for gaining Very Strong, -1 for losing Strong).

The next stage would be that more or less every basic species trait (except maybe Venerable) would upgrade to some advanced trait. This might require redesigning some existing advanced traits and adding a few new ones. Multiple basic traits could also have a shared upgrade. For example Intelligent and Talented could both upgrade to Erudite. A trait might also go through multiple upgrades. For example Adaptive could upgrade to Extremely Adaptive which would finally upgrade to Robust.

With all that in palce, the AI could be taught to first remove all negative traits, then add Erudite and the new "auto-modding" trait, then spend the rest of of the trait points on upgrading all remaining positive basic traits to their advanced version. If it then still has any trait points left over it could spend them on other advanced traits. This could be done fairly easily through the use of AI weights on species traits, which is a thing that's already in the game, though vanilla makes very limited use of it.

AI weights could probably also be used to make the AI pick cyborg traits that double down on existing species traits. For example if a species is Industrious the AI that could increase the weight of Power Drills. This would then reliably make AI empires give their Industrious cyborgs Power Drills, leading to a smaller number of designs than now when it'll add traits pretty much randomly.

AI weights could also be used to teach the AI to modify species in accordance to their species rights. For example the Erudite trait could be set to have 0 weight for pops whose traits and species rights block them from working Researcher jobs and becoming leaders.

I think we are actually much closer on this than you might think.

I argued for the potential of being able to genemod all species into your main, but I also agree that would be a massive buff. I think what HFY said earlier about being able to assimilate all species of a certain portrait type into one template would significantly reduce the amount of complexity while not being a huge stat buff (just a massive QoL buff).

I 100% agree with you on the misnamed automod traits.

I agree on the strong vs very strong

One item I would like to bring up would be the importance of being able to remove noxious which has a negative effect on all your other species and there are multiple ways to get species with this trait without ever adding it intentionally yourself.

I don't care if its Policy, Species Rights, or some other new mechanism, but it needs to address the tedium and difficulty.

The ideal system also wouldn't force you into it, but rather make it opt-in so that any purists who don't want to use it at all and still want 1000 subspecies can have them.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Way to completely miss the point both of you.

This isn't really about optimisation. It would be nice to be able to do that, but its way too much work. When i do go non-synth ascension i just try to get all my pops roughly on par with one another vuia trait modding and leave it at that. Its not as powerful as Synthetics overall or anywhere near the peak of what is possibble but it works and isn't completely impossible.


The real point i'm getting at though is that the traits of your species is a major part of customising your build. The more varied your actual empire population becomes the more you lose of that and eventually you can end up in a situation, (especially as psionic), where its completely lost.

Optimisation mostly becomes an issue if you want to make use of traits like delicious or nerve-stapled, or similar highly spelecised traits you can't put on your whole species. They're some of the key powers granted by bio ascension but are extremly difficult to make use of without it becoming an impossible mess. Also neither of them makes sense for egalitarians, which feels weird.

But the real point is how your species is setup is a key part of your ability to customise your empire, and its a huge pain to use as anything but synthetics.

This problem is not unique to genetic ascension, but is rather the result of allowing immigrants without necrophage or Synthethic (where your carefully set up species and identity is watered down the point of nothing by immigrants). It affects psionic and cybernetic too.

And that's not the point we're responding to. You said you have to gene mod every time immigrants enter. But you don't have to do that. That's something you're imposing on yourself.

If you don't want your empire to regress to the mean, don't allow xenos to enter your empire.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

"So just don't do that." is not a good solution to an unworkable system. It is an indicator that the system needs significant improvement. If there was a button in an automobile on the dashboard that made it explode, you wouldn't leave the button in the automobile and sell it as is. You also wouldn't add a "Just don't do that" warning label. Its a bad design that compromises the point of the origin and there are some relatively easy solutions described above. The silly part is how easy use of assimilation and some minor tweaks would fix the playability big time while not actually "buffing" it. I'm not looking for a buff, I'm looking for QoL.

I would love if the pop modding system was better.

But "genetic ascension sucks because I'm forced to start a tiny gene modding project for every individual pop that enters my empire" is a not a real problem. It's entirely self inflicted.

 

[secretagentguy]

I would love if the pop modding system was better.

But "genetic ascension sucks because I'm forced to start a tiny gene modding project for every individual pop that enters my empire" is a not a real problem. It's entirely self inflicted.

Choosing to ignore something doesn't make it not a problem. That implies you are using a workaround. Some things can make use of a workaround, others can't. This isn't a hard stop CTD, but it is an issue and its been made worse overtime by other changes to the game. I'm not saying you can't win the game at GA 25X playing as Bio, as soon as I claim that, someone will prove me wrong. I'm not complaining about the numbers in relation to Bio either (except the number of subspecies). It seems like you are just a contrarian at heart. We need some of those, but not every time.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Choosing to ignore something doesn't make it not a problem. That implies you are using a workaround. Some things can make use of a workaround, others can't. This isn't a hard stop CTD, but it is an issue and its been made worse overtime by other changes to the game. I'm not saying you can't win the game at GA 25X playing as Bio, as soon as I claim that, someone will prove me wrong. I'm not complaining about the numbers in relation to Bio either (except the number of subspecies). It seems like you are just a contrarian at heart. We need some of those, but not every time.

Do you manually tune your Entertainers so that you have the optimal amount of negative amenities? Do you prebuild every colony ship so that it's waiting at the planet when the starbase finishes building to get your colonies started 2 years earlier? Do you manually resettle every newly grown pop so that you don't waste 10 months (on average) on unemployment when they could be working instead? Do you keep a migrating stock of pops moving from planet to planet to deploy the e.g. size 25 capital upgrade (for all its efficiency benefits) to every planet as soon as you unlock it, even if the planet doesn't yet have 25 pops?

Ignoring these "problems" doesn't make them not "problems". Do you not feel forced to do these optimizations as well?

There are thousands of micro-optimizations you could do. That you won't/shouldn't choose to do them because they're more trouble than they're worth does not make them problems that the devs desperately need to solve, nor do they need to add UI support for doing them automatically. You can just choose not to do them.


And there is a workaround for genetic's annoying micro: turn on population controls by default, then convert only when you conquer enough pops to be worth modding. Don't let the unoptimized templates make more pops. Set your species screen to sort by population count so you don't have to look at the nonsense at the bottom of the list. Then convert species into better templates once there are enough of them from conquest/refugees to make it worth your time.

---

I agree that gene modding becomes a pain in the butt once you get a large number of species in your empire. I would like it to be better.

But the chain you're quoting is responding to this:

This works right up until you allow non-starter species into your empire via any of Conquest, Refugees, Migration, or Events. The moment you do that your going to get a whole bunch of extra species you have to mod every time you acquire a new one and constantly run projects to fix as they trickle in. And your going to get some subspecies with non-removable cybernetic or psionic related traits that can never be made to exactly match up.

"Genetic is terrible because you're forced to constantly genemod every refugee/migrant/conquered pop" is just catastrophizing about what are ultimately very minor annoyances: having to scroll in the species menu, having noisy piecharts, and missing some % of output on a small percentage of your empire. None of those are mandatory, and all the micro problems go away if you just stop torturing yourself trying to optimize the last 2% of your empire to be 5% more efficient.