Stellaris Dev Diary #270 - Traditional Results (of Summer Experiments)

[Grenartia]

Out of curiosity, will there be an egalitarian-friendly version of cyborg assimilation? Kinda bad to have to choose between imposing The Greater Good on the rest of the galaxy and automatically converting new pops to cyborgs.

 

[Foromar]

who could have thought that machines again get underwhelming changes

the empires that should play the most alien are still the most basic

I'm not even surprised by that anymore.
Synthetic ascension in general just feels like an afterthought.
Some random mechanic components, a flow chart and a mechanic cow? Everyone else gets some thematic pictures and then you see this stuff.
But apparently asking for some computer themed artwork was too hard for them.

Do you wanna bet, that they are going to forget about the nerfed machine template tech for machine empires?

 

[RabbaDooDabba]

Is there no way to keep the Latent Psionic trait on your primary species and finish the psionic tradition ?
The opener gives the trait and the 2nd/3rd tradition removes it and adds the regular Psionic trait...

 

[namewhichisnottakenyet]

Ok, now that biological pops get access to robot traits via the cybernetic path, we need a fertility enhancing robot trait!

 

[currylambchop]

I'm not even surprised by that anymore.
Synthetic ascension in general just feels like an afterthought.
Some random mechanic components, a flow chart and a mechanic cow? Everyone else gets some thematic pictures and then you see this stuff.
But apparently asking for some computer themed artwork was too hard for them.

Do you wanna bet, that they are going to forget about the nerfed machine template tech for machine empires?

synth ascension is literally the best in the game roflmao

 

[A2ch0n]

Question: What happens if we decide not to form a covenant at the end of the psionic tree? Do we get a second chance by the normal random shroud events?

Actually some covenants aren't a good idea in certain situations or maybe you get "the end of the cycle" whats most likely not the thing you want if you're not close to extinction. What i would like to see is the option to negotiate with all available covenants and select the one you want. Maybe with increased cost/time or something.

 

[Me_]

Some really cool things here!

I have one gripe with cyborgs that I don't think got addressed. One think I never quite liked is how both ordinary empires and driven assimilators use the same cyborg trait, when I would expect for the driven assimilator trait to have the extra effect of removing happiness. Basically the point of this would be that if you take over cyborgs from driven assimilators, they would be those unfeeling ones and would require modification to gain feelings and become affected by happiness.

 

[MicroBlogganism]

Oh, this looks very interesting! Love the idea of harvesting genes from leviathans, and I really like that the ascension is now a progress toward your chosen form of perfection.

Question 1: Will Polymelic be mutually exclusive with budding, or will we be able to stack them to become an even better biological snowball (meatball?) of pop assembly?

Question 2: Any chance of synth and cyborg being able to get special traits from mechanical leviathans? Surely the scavenger bot has tech that can repurposed for better recycling of old parts.

 

[Edorath]

Are cyborg traits stackable with their organic equivalent? If so, will synths traits get a slight buff? Otherwise, cyborgs might just outperform synths altogether.
Also will beings like the Toxic Entity or the Horror get traits too? I wanna inject the funny black hole juice into my pops to see what it does.

for science of course.

 

[Getty]

On the one hand this "decongests" the Ascension Perk choice conundrum, and gives a somewhat greater margin for choice.

On the other it just became a whole lot harder to decide which tradition trees to pick, since, if we take an ascension tree as a must, it only leaves 6 tradition tree slots remaining.

Maybe it would be good if conventional tradition trees could be buffed somewhat to keep up with these new Ascension Tradition Trees? (buffing Harmony and Domination trees finalizers to -15% empire size from pops? Expansion giving +2 max districts finalizer?)

 

[Foromar]

synth ascension is literally the best in the game roflmao

And how is that relevant to them stuffing ME's into a nerfed synth ascension, where they don't even get half of the boni? Or to the "strange" trait artwork?

 

[Calvax]

Out of curiosity, will there be an egalitarian-friendly version of cyborg assimilation? Kinda bad to have to choose between imposing The Greater Good on the rest of the galaxy and automatically converting new pops to cyborgs.

You're not forcing it, you're facilitating it. If traditions represent the culture of your empire and its "collective will" then all your pops want to be cyborgs. The special project isn't black vans rounding up civilians and taking them to an upgrade center, it's grants and funds to ensure everyone has access.

Reverse the headcanon for playing auth.

 

[Calvax]

Question 2: Any chance of synth and cyborg being able to get special traits from mechanical leviathans? Surely the scavenger bot has tech that can repurposed for better recycling of old parts.

Scavenger bot, enigmatic fortress, automated dreadnaught, so much potential for traits there.

 

[Chuunibyou Imouto]

These changes seem quite nice, but as someone already mentioned, we really, really need some love shown to the species panel. It's currently a horrible experience to try and use when you have dozens of species in your empire, and it's honesty the main reason I like going Necrophage most games, just to simplify the species page to a usable amount.

It would be extremely nice if we could just create a template for Miners, then apply it to ALL species at once that we wanted to convert into miners. Then make one for researchers, then one for metalurgists etc.


Also, while you guys are looking at AP and traditions, can we get a tradition that focuses on Terraforming? I feel like this would make far more sense than the current system of a mixture of techs and APs. If we had a Terraforming Tradition you could just take it and go down the line learning to terraform the basic planets, terraform worlds people are living on, terraform the special planets like Thrall Worlds and Resort Worlds, and then the finisher could give Gaia Worlds or even Ecumenopolis if there was some kind of extra requirement to make sure it wasn't taken too early, like requiring 80 pops on a planet to turn it into an Ecu or something.


This would solve multiple issues at once, with those issues being

• Having to rely on RNG to gain the ability to terraform the planet type you care about
• Thrall Worlds being FAR FAR FAR FAR too freaking rare. I literally almost never get it before year 2300 even with statecraft scientists and thousands of research per tick and it's nigh useless late game because you have to rebuild your entire planet just to make it a thrall world, even if it was already a mining only world
• World Shaper being fun for flavor but not worth taking an entire AP for

 

[Interesting Meat 222182]

Some of the changes we’ve made here could be considered fairly spicy as we’ve reduced the sheer amount of robot assembly that you could gain by no longer scaling the number of roboticists by the tier of the capital building. Though, of the changes we’ve made, the ability to convert all species (including other empires’ robots) into your synths is one of my favorites.

Does this mean a synth ascended empire now can only have maximum 2 roboticist (1 capital + 1 assembly plant) per planet now? And it will be back to 1 without taking the final tradition?
Does the dev really want to turn this ascension path from the best to the worst? How can synth compete with the sheer pop growth of bio and the +20% efficiency of psionic?
And could synth ascended empire assimilate robots pop of other species into their own as well? I hope that should be a feature, instead of having like 20 different species of robots in my empire. DO that apply to machine pop as well, or we still have to purge them?
Still, the change you made makes synth ascension sound much weaker than the other three. Massively inferior pop growth (4 assembly from 2 roboticist compared to 6 from the clone vat alone without even costing pop working there), inferior efficiency (psionic get +20%, synth get +10%), weaker traits (synthetic traits is one of teh weakest traits to be had, erudite give +20% research speed, psychic give +10% and synthetic give 5%??) and never have enough trait points to get anything done (5 trait points compared to 12 of bio and 8 of cyborg. And cyborg robot traits cost 1 point less). Oh, and doing so pissed off everyone else.

 

[Miesha]

People running off-topic here, whatever.
I personally like all these changes. As a near permanent hivemind player I'm absolutely enamoured with the idea of becoming a cybernetic hivemind ala Stargate Wraith or Star Trek Borg.

However, I want to point out a concern/wish. This in regards to the Psionic finisher. Let the poor Psionic suckers CHOOSE their covenant instead of having it rely on RNG. Lots of Psionic stuff is RNG based and RNG is absolutely not fun. And yeah this is coming from someone who never plays Psionic path... There's a good reason for that aside from prefering hiveminds. Even in those instances where I do play regular empires its always synth or bio ascension for me. Please consider allowing them to choose their covenant and at the same time maybe consider reducing their penalties a little bit. Especially the one that literally eats pops, no bonus is ever worth sacrificing your own pops, its why people hate the Vengralian Trium trading caravan too.

 

[AaronArx]

Oooh this is so great!

A small nitpick though, now that synthetic and cybernetic ascension are two different things...can the flesh is weak project not upset the traditionalist factions anymore?

We could finally have the adeptus mechanicus!

 

[Nwaij]

Any chance for fully syntheically ascended empires to be eligible to pick machine worlds? Because, you know, they happen to be machines by now?

 

[Interesting Meat 222182]

People running off-topic here, whatever.
I personally like all these changes. As a near permanent hivemind player I'm absolutely enamoured with the idea of becoming a cybernetic hivemind ala Stargate Wraith or Star Trek Borg.

However, I want to point out a concern/wish. This in regards to the Psionic finisher. Let the poor Psionic suckers CHOOSE their covenant instead of having it rely on RNG. Lots of Psionic stuff is RNG based and RNG is absolutely not fun. And yeah this is coming from someone who never plays Psionic path... There's a good reason for that aside from prefering hiveminds. Even in those instances where I do play regular empires its always synth or bio ascension for me. Please consider allowing them to choose their covenant and at the same time maybe consider reducing their penalties a little bit. Especially the one that literally eats pops, no bonus is ever worth sacrificing your own pops, its why people hate the Vengralian Trium trading caravan too.

Psionic have +20% efficiency for free with though police, which is double the benefit from being a machine.
Your psionic sucker are not going to have more benefit by being able to choose the patron you like. Pray to the RNG god and accept your fate.

 

[malakhglitch]

Spoiler: Machine Synthetic Traditions

• Opener
  • Can assimilate robot and machine species into your primary machine species.
• Tradition 1: Maintenance Protocols
  • −10% Machine Amenities Usage
• Tradition 2: Optimization Algorithms
  • +10% Machine Output
• Tradition 3: Efficient Power Systems
  • +1 Trait pick for Machines
• Tradition 4: Prefabricated Components
  • -50% Modify Species special project cost
• Tradition 5: Solid-State Actuators
  • +2 Machine Modification Points
• Finisher:
  • Machine leaders gain the Synthetic trait.
  • +1 Replicator jobs added to capital building

In order to get the Synthetic Tradition a Machine Intelligence needs to get the Synthetic Age AP. Will the Synthetic Age AP's requirements stay the same or will it be modified? Currently it requires 2 other APs.

Also, will the benefits of the Synthetic Age AP stack with the Synthetic Tradition bonuses? Because if things stay the same that would be an 83% modify species special project cost and a total of 4 machine modification points.

Did I get that right?

Stupid me. I realized that all a Machine Intelligence needs is the Machine Template System Technology to open the Synthetic Tradition.