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

[secretagentguy]

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:


"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.

I agree that last quote was a little OCD - thats not me. Sometimes I go with AI ship designs just because I don't want to have to mess with it.

I can honestly say no to every thing you listed there, some of it is cheese, some of it is borderline exploitative and the unemployment thing fixes itself (this was also something I raised before there was auto-resettlement, but the automation fixed most of the pain points and I'm not complaining about it anymore. I want them to give subspecies and the species list in general the same treatment.

turning on pop-controls only prevents new inferior pops from being grown, it doesn't fix the ones you already have. It also has a malus with it.

What problems to you feel are more impactful and should be prioritized much higher? Stellaris is already a pretty great game, we are just talking about minor flaws in a diamond, not a lump of coal. I would personally love to see a Megacorp Branch planner / expansion planner improvement.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

What problems to you feel are more impactful and should be prioritized much higher?

At no point did I say it shouldn't be worked on. In fact, I repeatedly said I'd like to see it improved.

I don't disagree with working on it at all. I'm just annoyed by claim that self imposed chores make it too cumbersome to play.

I would really like if genetic got some QoL changes. It also needs a big boost in raw power to compete with the new machine ascensions, Synths, and cybernetic (all of which look like they're getting pretty hefty power boosts in the DLC).

Assimilating to the main species makes it just Synths wearing a funny hat, so that's a no go. But I would love the ability to get something like Cybernetic/Psionic's assimilation options, which just add the main trait.

The generic version would be to take the same template and make them generically "good".

Minimally: add Robust, removing Non-Adaptive or Adaptive if necessary. Max 6 points, so guaranteed to work (on non lithoids).

Bonus: Replace all specific resource traits with automodding (1 or 2 extra points), if you can afford it, and spend the rest of the points automatically removing negative traits.

It would be a safe default which does 60% of the work without any micro.

Stellaris is already a pretty great game, we are just talking about minor flaws in a diamond, not a lump of coal. I would personally love to see a Megacorp Branch planner / expansion planner improvement.

There are a thousand rough edges I'd like to see sanded off, but the biggest is dead/trap content in civics/ethics (like Rangers or Mutual Benefit, or slavery, or Crucible Worlds) which just needs a slight buff.

It's less balance between empires or empire options that I see as an issue; civics can be weak and that's fine with me, as long as they're not boring. It's more balance between options that the player is presented with after they've already made the big choices, especially if the weak/useless option is supposed to be some unique benefit with the civic/ethic/tradition.

For example, genetic being generally weaker than all other ascensions is less of an issue than the fact that once you've already chosen genetic, all sorts of choices like Drake Scaled, Voidling, Inorganic Breath, etc. are laughably bad and only do things which can easily be achieved using the default tools, more efficiently.

Unique things should have at least one incomparable (or, at least, difficult to compare) benefit or one thing they do really well. If they're just inferior to the default options, then they have no reason to exist.

Genetic, I feel, already has enough to justify its existence. It has mountains of pop growth, Nerve Stapled/Delicious/Felsic, the unique ability to completely rewrite pops (though, as discussed, this could be much better), etc.

It can certainly be made better, though.

 

[Shark7]

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.

I'd be fine keeping the restrictions limited to AI only. After all, I can control how many sub-species I make, it's the AI that can't understand that too much of a good thing is still really bad.

 

[Nevars]

I would like to point out that psionic assimilation is not painless either.

Especially if your empire have significant number of xeno (i.e. necrophage, clone army, etc.).

The shock on your economy from entire species suddenly become a burden is huge if you are not careful.

And if you want to significantly reduce that period of vulnerability then it's no less micro than bio.

It's also make newly acquired xeno pops useless for a time too.

While biomodding doesn't have that problem but instead it's taxing on the mind of some player.

 

[DeanTheDull]

Aren't Lithoids technically far worse off in this regard seeing as they can only take the Crystallization trait for the 0.02 assembly per pop? Phages can still make their prepatents fertile or vat-grown.

I'm unclear what your question is.

Yes, Necrophages can have a secondary species that grows faster- but so can a lithoid empire. What a Necrophage can't do is actually add the 0.0X assembly per pop traits at all, and as the general goal of a necrophage empire is to maximize the number of necro-pops, that's a much larger hit to the growth formula. A lithoid can at least add that 0.02 assembly to a non-lithoid species, but a necrophage can't boost the assembly of any species at all, and the greater a % of the empire they are, the less space there is for any pop growth boon.

The loss of XYZ pops of .02 assembly per pop is, all things considered, relatively minor, but it's one of those minor things that can bug.

 

[Archael90]

This is my idea:
Bio ascension, gene modding and gene tab

 

[Caeric]

I'm unclear what your question is.

Yes, Necrophages can have a secondary species that grows faster- but so can a lithoid empire. What a Necrophage can't do is actually add the 0.0X assembly per pop traits at all, and as the general goal of a necrophage empire is to maximize the number of necro-pops, that's a much larger hit to the growth formula. A lithoid can at least add that 0.02 assembly to a non-lithoid species, but a necrophage can't boost the assembly of any species at all, and the greater a % of the empire they are, the less space there is for any pop growth boon.

The loss of XYZ pops of .02 assembly per pop is, all things considered, relatively minor, but it's one of those minor things that can bug.

As in lithoids have far fewer ascension traits they can pick overall since many are not compatible with lithoids at all, and unlike necrophage you're not required to have a secondary regular biological species, not to mention the food upkeep negates one of the main benefits of being lithoid in not needing to produce food. Secondly budding and crystallisation with the 0.02 pop assembly are not really genetic ascension traits, they're just regular traits although species limited. The only ascension-exclusive such trait is Polymelic which gives 0.05 instead but requires you to kill the Tiyanki Matriarch.

Even so necrophages still probably have the 2nd highest pop assembly with vat-grown on their pre-patents and arguably more efficient main pops. Not to mention you can just raid or conquer to make up the difference and not have to care about microing a bunch of unwanted species.

 

[Incompetent]

A lithoid can at least add that 0.02 assembly to a non-lithoid species, but a necrophage can't boost the assembly of any species at all, and the greater a % of the empire they are, the less space there is for any pop growth boon.

You can still give your prepatent species Budding, so I don't know what you mean by "can't boost the assembly of any species at all". What is true is that *if you convert most of your population to Necrophages*, then the benefit of such a trait will be limited (since the Necrophage pops themselves can't have it). But as a non-Gestalt at least, you're not forced to convert everyone; the vast majority of jobs can be done by non-Necrophages, and non-Necrophage pops can still be boosted by whatever ascension you pick. Is the argument then that there's no point using Necrophage origin unless you plan to assimilate the majority of the pops?

 

[fourteenfour]

I would prefer all specie and machine modification to be done with energy or an energy and influence combination that tracks like a situation.

The logic here is empires have already expended the necessary research to do it so all that is needed is expenditure of resources. The influence angle is one way to throttle and also put to question in the early game when influence is needed if the use is appropriate right now

 

[Abdulijubjub]

You can still give your prepatent species Budding, so I don't know what you mean by "can't boost the assembly of any species at all". What is true is that *if you convert most of your population to Necrophages*, then the benefit of such a trait will be limited (since the Necrophage pops themselves can't have it). But as a non-Gestalt at least, you're not forced to convert everyone; the vast majority of jobs can be done by non-Necrophages, and non-Necrophage pops can still be boosted by whatever ascension you pick. Is the argument then that there's no point using Necrophage origin unless you plan to assimilate the majority of the pops?

Yes, I think that's the argument.

If you aren't converting most of your population to necrophages, why are you playing the origin? Isn't that the point?

 

[Sian]

For individualists, your necrophage population is your Specialist/Ruler/Leader caste (in extreme cases even only rulers, researchers and leaders) using their trait points strictly on stuff improving this) while your prepatents are your grunts that does all the worker jobs and possibly some/most of your specialists jobs

 

[Abdulijubjub]

For individualists, your necrophage population is your Specialist/Ruler/Leader caste (in extreme cases even only rulers, researchers and leaders) using their trait points strictly on stuff improving this) while your prepatents are your grunts that does all the worker jobs and possibly some/most of your specialists jobs

You're leaving a lot of yields and saved upkeep on the table if you have prepatents working specialist jobs just so you can get +0.02 assembly (1/100th of a roboticist).

 

[Sian]

You're leaving a lot of yields and saved upkeep on the table if you have prepatents working specialist jobs just so you can get +0.02 assembly (1/100th of a roboticist).

Yeah, because that's the absolute only reason why you wouldn't necrophage everything *nods sagely*

...

no, i was pointing out cases and reasons why you wouldn't want to do so, that wasn't limited to access to budding

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Yeah, because that's the absolute only reason why you wouldn't necrophage everything *nods sagely*

...

no, i was pointing out cases and reasons why you wouldn't want to do so, that wasn't limited to access to budding

...and none of those cases/reasons apply, because you can just give those traits to the necrophages instead of the prepatents.

 

[DeanTheDull]

You can still give your prepatent species Budding, so I don't know what you mean by "can't boost the assembly of any species at all". What is true is that *if you convert most of your population to Necrophages*, then the benefit of such a trait will be limited (since the Necrophage pops themselves can't have it). But as a non-Gestalt at least, you're not forced to convert everyone; the vast majority of jobs can be done by non-Necrophages, and non-Necrophage pops can still be boosted by whatever ascension you pick. Is the argument then that there's no point using Necrophage origin unless you plan to assimilate the majority of the pops?

That argument would be stretching it (I fully accept points of role play or a strategy build around diplomatic balancing requiring a minimization of conversions), but it would be directionally correct. I generally feel that signature mechanics should be maximized, not minimized, as part of a build strategy, and the signature mechanic of necrophage is mutually exclusive with per-pop pop assembly traits. Whether you convert 20% or 80% of your empire's population into necrophage, that's 20-80% less per-pop pop assembly that another empire of equivalent size could have.

If you're only converting super-small %s of your empire to necrophage, I would question why you're playing necrophage in the first place vis-a-vis another empire who could just enforce a leadership race via policy, but it's also aside from the point. The point is that necrophages can't maximally leverage the primary strength of bio-ascension, which is scaling bio-assembly, and that while that's a loss it can also be an annoying one.


And to be clear- I'm not taking a position this is terrible. I'm not even claiming it's worse. In Necrophage strategic contexts, it's probably better to NOT do the per-pop growth even if you could, because the necrophage mid-game is often their mid-game and it's more important to cinch your win before your potential necrophaging diplomatic penalties become insurmountable than it is to build up more pops. Bio-assembly without budding is still a potent thing. It's just not-as-good-at-the-thing-the-ascension-is-trying-to-maximize.

 

[DeanTheDull]

As in lithoids have far fewer ascension traits they can pick overall since many are not compatible with lithoids at all, and unlike necrophage you're not required to have a secondary regular biological species, not to mention the food upkeep negates one of the main benefits of being lithoid in not needing to produce food.

Again, I'm not really clear what your argument is.

Lithoid can certainly get the most significant / relevant bio-ascension traits, and this includes the growth-per-pop traits. Lithoid-Necrophage can't get the growth-per-pop traits, but that's because of Necrophage, Lithoid.
Lithoid is not required to get a secondary species, but this is entirely a matter of player choice. If you think this is good or bad, you can pick the other. Any sort of strategy-optimized game is going to get additional species over time as a growth species after the early game Lithoid advantage fades.
The Lithoid advantage about not having food at all. In the early game, it's about having the space economy offset your need for farmers, but as an upkeep resource miners are less efficient per-pop than farmers. It's not a bad thing to need farmers, because the alternative to needing farmers is needing less-effecient miners.

Secondly budding and crystallisation with the 0.02 pop assembly are not really genetic ascension traits, they're just regular traits although species limited. The only ascension-exclusive such trait is Polymelic which gives 0.05 instead but requires you to kill the Tiyanki Matriarch.

In strategic terms, budding and crystalization are only optimal/great treats in a Bio-Ascension ascension, because it's only on the bio-ascension build that you can add them in later and take out the better early-game trait that loses value on ascension.

In terms of raw growth, budding and crystalization are flat worse than other traits including- but not limited to- Incubator, which is far superior for the early-game economy spin up that sets the conditions for dominance. While a trait like Incubator falls off in value over time, and provides no benefit to a pop already grown, it's the advantage of more pops earlier that matters on the competitive front.

By contrast, budding and crystalization are basically worthless in the early game for most empires (aside from gestalt and zombie-corps) because you lack the critical mass of pops / sources of organic pop assembly to make the pop growth via a parallel track worth it. By the time you get even a single pop from Budding specifically, you could credibly have robotic assembly for far, far more pop growth. Given that mechanical and organic pop assembly are mutually exclusive, you have to have some other form of organic pop assembly to make it worth having budding on a species.

In strategic terms, budding's niche is thus not to have at the start, but to replace your early-game growth trait. Rapid Breeder does nothing on an already bred species, but budding turns every existing pop into additional growth. However, Bio Ascension is the only ascension that can do that sort of trait swap on organic species. Cybernetics can add additional traits, but not recycle the trait points and trait slot.

Even so necrophages still probably have the 2nd highest pop assembly with vat-grown on their pre-patents and arguably more efficient main pops.

Neither the prepatents or the more efficient specialist pops boost pop assembly. Pop Assembly isn't affected by the Necrophage trait (except as a massive malus if you try to build a necrophage pop directly), and having fewer non-necrophages (because you converted them to necrophages) means you're always going to have a lower pop-assembly potential than a non-necrophage empire of equal size.

Necrophage has its benefits, but it is never even 2nd best in terms of pop-assembly potential. All bio-ascended empires have potential for vat-grown, and all non-necrophage empires can get more bio-assembly inputs for higher pop-assembly.

 

[MadCow94]

Four pages of discussion and nobody has pointed out the obvious flaw in this argument.

Why would your empire ever have more than 1 species anyway? Suffer not the Xeno!

 

[cryptkeeper]

Four pages of discussion and nobody has pointed out the obvious flaw in this argument.

Why would your empire ever have more than 1 species anyway? Suffer not the Xeno!

Xenocampatiability for the extra trait point/pick. Especially if you find presapians and up lift them. Also a slave work force, for your "better pops" ,

 

[Caeric]

Again, I'm not really clear what your argument is.

Lithoid can certainly get the most significant / relevant bio-ascension traits, and this includes the growth-per-pop traits. Lithoid-Necrophage can't get the growth-per-pop traits, but that's because of Necrophage, Lithoid.
Lithoid is not required to get a secondary species, but this is entirely a matter of player choice. If you think this is good or bad, you can pick the other. Any sort of strategy-optimized game is going to get additional species over time as a growth species after the early game Lithoid advantage fades.
The Lithoid advantage about not having food at all. In the early game, it's about having the space economy offset your need for farmers, but as an upkeep resource miners are less efficient per-pop than farmers. It's not a bad thing to need farmers, because the alternative to needing farmers is needing less-effecient miners.






In strategic terms, budding and crystalization are only optimal/great treats in a Bio-Ascension ascension, because it's only on the bio-ascension build that you can add them in later and take out the better early-game trait that loses value on ascension.

In terms of raw growth, budding and crystalization are flat worse than other traits including- but not limited to- Incubator, which is far superior for the early-game economy spin up that sets the conditions for dominance. While a trait like Incubator falls off in value over time, and provides no benefit to a pop already grown, it's the advantage of more pops earlier that matters on the competitive front.

By contrast, budding and crystalization are basically worthless in the early game for most empires (aside from gestalt and zombie-corps) because you lack the critical mass of pops / sources of organic pop assembly to make the pop growth via a parallel track worth it. By the time you get even a single pop from Budding specifically, you could credibly have robotic assembly for far, far more pop growth. Given that mechanical and organic pop assembly are mutually exclusive, you have to have some other form of organic pop assembly to make it worth having budding on a species.

In strategic terms, budding's niche is thus not to have at the start, but to replace your early-game growth trait. Rapid Breeder does nothing on an already bred species, but budding turns every existing pop into additional growth. However, Bio Ascension is the only ascension that can do that sort of trait swap on organic species. Cybernetics can add additional traits, but not recycle the trait points and trait slot.





Neither the prepatents or the more efficient specialist pops boost pop assembly. Pop Assembly isn't affected by the Necrophage trait (except as a massive malus if you try to build a necrophage pop directly), and having fewer non-necrophages (because you converted them to necrophages) means you're always going to have a lower pop-assembly potential than a non-necrophage empire of equal size.

Necrophage has its benefits, but it is never even 2nd best in terms of pop-assembly potential. All bio-ascended empires have potential for vat-grown, and all non-necrophage empires can get more bio-assembly inputs for higher pop-assembly.

My original point was in terms of overall synergy with the ascension type as you can use most traits either directly or indirectly.

Either case if the optimal play is to replace your lithoids to grow regular organics instead doesn't that reinforce that?

And yes whilst a regular bio genetic ascended empire beats phages in these circumstances, I'm pretty sure you still beat every other ascension type in terms of pop growth hence why I reckon you'd still be second best, also what's stopping you putting vat-grown on your pre-patents?

 

[Abdulijubjub]

My original point was in terms of overall synergy with the ascension type as you can use most traits either directly or indirectly.

And yes whilst a regular bio genetic ascended empire beats phages in these circumstances, I'm pretty sure you still beat every other ascension type in terms of pop growth hence why I reckon you'd still be second best, also what's stopping you putting vat-grown on your pre-patents?

Without Polymelic or Budding, Genetic can't beat Modularity (or even Synths) now, though both of those need to pay a small pop tax on assembly.

Genetic gets Exotic Metabolism, Fertile, +20% from techs (7.875 growth) and Vats plus Vat Grown (5.625), for a total of 13.5

Machines get Mass Produced, Monoform, 4 Roboticists (with 50% extra base output) plus a Synth ruler, and 20% from techs (plus another 20% from Rapid Replicators, though it's probably not fair to count that). (4*2*1.5+1)*1.45*1.2=21.06. If they really wanted growth they could also grow organic pops for another 5.85, but those pops won't get their absurd +60% output from Dark Matter Engines, so they probably won't want that.

Even with Vat Grown and Polymelic, genetic would need 120 pops per planet to match Modularity's growth. And if Genetic gets Polymelic, then Modularity gets the scavenger bot trait (another 50% growth that's additive with the other two traits).

They also both have agendas and a few council positions or civics which boost assembly/growth, but those are temporary so it gets weird.

I've probably forgotten something genetic gets (don't have a save in 3.12), but 13.5 vs. 21.06 (with another 5.85 if you really want it) is a very wide gap.