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Stellaris Dev Diary #275 - Bless Thy Soul

Hello everyone!

It’s been a busy few weeks here on the Stellaris team, and I wanted to thank the community for helping us out so much with the 3.6 Orion Open Beta.

There was significantly more activity than anticipated - during the month of October, over 100,000 players took part in the Orion Open Beta branch - and the volume of feedback we received was incredible. The 3.6 update should be much better thanks to your involvement.

We have a few more fixes that we’d like to get into the update (such as vassals colonizing Holy Worlds), after which it’ll go through the final testing, localization, and release process. As mentioned last week, we’ll be keeping the Open Beta branch available until the live release of 3.6 Orion so you can continue your games.

I’ll now pass you over to Mr.Cosmogone, who will provide a bit of enlightenment about one of the features that has been in the Open Beta, but hasn’t gotten a proper dev diary thus far. (Now, with non-placeholder art!)

Raising Spirits

Peace be upon you, children,

Mr.Cosmogone here, to tell you about the upcoming Spiritualist Federation. I had the chance to collaborate on this with the famous Caligula who had long yearned for a way to share his spiritual convictions with his allies.

Some of you may have already had a chance to play this as part of the ongoing Open Beta, they might not find anything new here, but for the rest of the faithfuls, let me introduce to the Holy Covenant:

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Spiritualist empires will find this new federation type to be quite aligned with their gamestyle, as it will provide them with a range of bonuses about unity, priests and the spiritualist faction.

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Their level two perks will help lay strong foundations for your church:

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While the third level will help you on your way towards ascension:

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At the fourth level, priests will start appearing left and right to carry the good word.

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The fifth and last level of the federation will be a consecration for its members:

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Like all federation types, the Holy Covenant comes with a unique succession challenge, the conclave, where the most pious are assured to be rewarded. Or perhaps the most generous. Money is the root of all sins after all, so you might as well give it away.

That’s it from me this week, and remember if you want to play all the cool things we’ve talked about over the last few weeks, go play the beta!

To opt-in to the Open Beta branch, right-click Stellaris, click Properties, Betas tab, and choose “Stellaris_test” from the drop-down.
 
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I think this is lunacy. Imagine a malevolent machine intelligence which controlled all bodies in a networked fashion, which was capable of simulating your personality well enough to fool outside observers, no matter how many resources were devoted to detection, until it had sufficient majority to exterminate the other biologicals and simply claim your empire's infrastructure, ships, etc. for itself. This would look identical to "ideal" synthetic ascension, until it didn't.

It is certainly a possibility, but it does not invalidate the "happy" scenario.

We have with the brain slugs a quite similar biological equivalent in stellaris.
They could be just a benevolent symbiont.
Or they could snuff out your consciousness (and/or in case of demonic brain slugs, eat you soul), absorb your memories and operate your body like a puppet. And noone outside can tell the difference. But you certainly can (well, you could if "you" would still exist).
And I find the second option rather more likely. But as said, it does not make the first one not a valid possibility.

IMO it is just the same with the synthetic ascension.
If a malevolent machine intelligence took over after/by transferring to a mechanical body it effectively killed you, just as a malevolent brain slug killed you. And even if no one outside can tell the difference, you certainly could.
But it can also be just a happy transfer of your "self" into another container. You can also explain the shift to materialistic in that case. If someone finds himself in a robotic body (and has no psychic breakdown because he is a "true believer") which is immortal (unless you are a leader) and is far superior than the previous biological one it certainly would promote a ideology shift to materialistic. At least in the "robots are cool!" area, but that is part of the materialistic ideology.
 
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Is there any news of OG Toxic God x Shroud Patron?
Any Worm-in-waiting interactions?

im not even sure if he was merely a shroud...tiyanki or amoeba or a higher sentient being?