Stellaris Dev Diary #63: Synthetic and Biological Ascension

[JT Jag]

So any chance for half robot-half species portraits? Do robot pops grow naturally or have to be produced when you fully transfer? And does gene modding still take forever- could be pretty annoying to unlock all this new stuff and have to wait 10+ years to implement it.

I'm pretty sure making a robotic version of every single species portrait in the game would kill the artists, but it would be nice if when evolving to a synthetic form you had a bit of choice as to what your peoples' new bodies looked like. Because if you're a fungus person, why would you turn your entire population into humanoid robots? Just one or two robotic visual options for each species type (humanoid, mammalian, etc) would be nice, even if it has to come in a cosmetic DLC.

 

[DutchTheGuy]

Delicious: Makes the species delicious and nutritious, granting +100% food yield from Processing and Livestock.

My favourite thing to do this far.

 

[Vahouth]

I'm pretty sure making a robotic version of every single species portrait in the game would kill the artists, but it would be nice if when evolving to a synthetic form you had a bit of choice as to what your peoples' new bodies looked like. Because if you're a fungus person, why would you turn your entire population into humanoid robots? Just one or two robotic visual options for each species type (humanoid, mammalian, etc) would be nice, even if it has to come in a cosmetic DLC.

I would be perfectly happy with just a single synth from each phenotype. A median.

 

[ModZero]

Because the wierd thign about Venus' orbit is not it's orbit aroudn the sun but it's orbit aroudn it's own axis, which gives it month long days and nights. Quite different from moving a planet to the other side of the solar system. Heck with shades and mirrors you could fix the issue without having to fix the orbit.

I described it that way because it's really barely a difference. And "shades and mirrors" is "who needs planets anyway" tech.

No it's not, you create some aerosolic algae or bacteria that live in Venus' atmosphere and collect carbon and then falls to the ground to form carbon rich sediments when they die. Just like earth's sea algae collected our carbon and locked most of it away in limestone.

Good luck with that. What's going to do the seeding, and how will it survive Venus? Venus is really so bad, you need to make it habitable for your equipment first. Surface is not even inhabitable for robots, and various blimps have rather limited lifespans. And I suspect your "aerosol algae or bacteria" will suffer quire a bit as well. For starters, it's 96% CO2, which sounds great until you realise that you need more than just carbon and oxygen to have your bacteria survive. You need way more hydrogen, for example. So I guess bombarding with comets (again), but then who need planets anyway? And why would you ruin an interesting planet if you can live in an orbital and leave the planet alone? This is such a boring idea.

Meanwhile, you can make Martian atmosphere habitable to everything by putting a dome and a bit of shielding in it. Preferably some internal structure, domes have acoustics that get old quickly.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

I can't help but feel biological ascension is gimped somewhat. Its endgame should automatically give you 1 if not all of the new special traits and +300 years to your lifespan as increasing the longevity of your species. As it is, it seems venerable is still super expensive and reaching one of the new special traits basically requires you to already have one of the extreme traits.

 

[Vahouth]

I don't know how plausible it is to terraform Venus, but it can be habitable only with Cloud cities.

 

[SevenSerpents]

Theocratic Republic (gov) negates Solitary, and lowers food consumption = more food = faster growth rate

Governments are out and replaced by Civics come Banks, unless picking the republic leadership option completely simulates the benefit.

 

[Democratic Monarchy]

I just can't wait for Hive Minds. It would allow me to finally make a proper Tyranid Empire.

 

[siets]

Can we expect to see fallen empires that have embraced these ascention paths or even some new end game crisis ideas from this?

 

[Garfazz Steamfang]

I just can't wait for Hive Minds. It would allow me to finally make a proper Tyranid Empire.

Without organic ships and buildings and portraits.

 

[Democratic Monarchy]

Without organic ships and buildings and portraits.

Thanks to mods, that can change. Bless you, GabeN.

 

[TheDungen]

I described it that way because it's really barely a difference. And "shades and mirrors" is "who needs planets anyway" tech.



Good luck with that. What's going to do the seeding, and how will it survive Venus? Venus is really so bad, you need to make it habitable for your equipment first. Surface is not even inhabitable for robots, and various blimps have rather limited lifespans. And I suspect your "aerosol algae or bacteria" will suffer quire a bit as well. For starters, it's 96% CO2, which sounds great until you realise that you need more than just carbon and oxygen to have your bacteria survive. You need way more hydrogen, for example. So I guess bombarding with comets (again), but then who need planets anyway? And why would you ruin an interesting planet if you can live in an orbital and leave the planet alone? This is such a boring idea.

Meanwhile, you can make Martian atmosphere habitable to everything by putting a dome and a bit of shielding in it. Preferably some internal structure, domes have acoustics that get old quickly.

Yeah but you can't make the martian gravity livable! Even in Stellaris when we have AG fields, which we in reality BTW have no idea how to do, doing it on a planetary scale without tearing the entire planet apart is even more "who needs planets anyway". Fixing a planets atmosphere is easy, messing aroudn with it's mass is a whole other thing.

And do you even know the meaning of the word aerosol? They are floating, suspended in the atmosphere, nothing can survive on Venus' surface but the upper atmosphere is a a paradise. And no you don't need oxygen for algae, algae take in sunlight and co2 and produce oxygen. That's the point. They're CO2 scrubbers. As for hydrogen it is already there in the form of Hydrogen sulfide H2S which you'll notice has a very similar chemical composition to water. Now some engineering would be required for them to use the materials available locally but it's far from impossible. Oh and the 96% is the avarage of the atmosphere but carbon dioxide is heavy so it will be more concentrated near the surface while lighter gasses will be much more prevalent in the upper atmosphere. Often called the sulferic acid layer. And you know what defines an acid? Hydrogen ions (in fact sulphuric acid is what you get when you mix aforementioned hydrogen sulfide into water).

Edit: Turns out there are scientists who believe such microbes already exist.

And no orbital habitats are way more complicated (You'll need to solve the cosmic radiation issue and again the gravity issue) than getting some frozen hydrogen to a planet, considering hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, by far (roughly 74% of out galaxy's mass is hydrogen).

Look smarter people than you or me at NASA are seriously considering this stuff, so perhaps you should not be so quick to dismiss it? Meanwhile no one ho knows anythign thinks we'll ever settle mars any more. The gravity issue is far to severe. Prolonged exposure to low gravity seems to result in total organ shut down, not just muscle decay but even things like eyesight is screwed up by prolonged exposure to low gravity.

 

[Krajzen]

My only disappointment with this is how few special biological gene mods are available. Just five and two of them are "evil totalitarian" and one is just "faster breeding".. I hoped gene modifications would focus more on biologically upgrading brains and nervous systems, enabling your species to rise on some entirely new mind level with it, yet we only get one "few percents more intelligence" thing.

Or some totally rad stuff such as synthetic pheromones, cloning, biological regeneration, better uplift, hybrids etc

 

[Little One]

I have to admit..? I'm a little shocked. I feel like after the initial teaser video for Utopia that the Synthetic path is off key. I'm not saying it's weak. I don't see a problem with it necessarily, I just figured ASCENSION to mean a little more than all android pops. I kinda figured what we saw in that teaser was a planet covered in servers housing the consciousness of all of your pops. I kinda figured that's what the Synthetic path would end in. Immortal computer pops that send out drones to do their bidding, rather than... well... synths. Which... are already in the game. I'm similarly surprised that synths aren't locked off to the ascension trait as Psyonics have been (unless I'm mistaken). I mean, sure, keep robots and droids open to anyone, but I feel like Synths should be locked behind the ascension if that's what they're going with for the final perk.

Similarly, I was hoping for a little more out of the Biological path. Genemodding is nice, but it still feels very restricted. I feel like you should be able to mod into your species more than to a specific planet type. I feel like the goal of a biological ascension would be to be without any negative traits and be exceedingly adaptive. Capable of living in any climate type. Including Tomb worlds... which... again is already a tech in the game. I also saw an earlier post mentioning Bioships, I think that would be a neat Ascension-perk only un-lockable tech.

In general I feel like that would fit the theme better of 'ascending to utopia' overall.

 

[Democratic Monarchy]

I have to admit..? I'm a little shocked. I feel like after the initial teaser video for Utopia that the Synthetic path is off key. I'm not saying it's weak. I don't see a problem with it necessarily, I just figured ASCENSION to mean a little more than all android pops. I kinda figured what we saw in that teaser was a planet covered in servers housing the consciousness of all of your pops. I kinda figured that's what the Synthetic path would end in. Immortal computer pops that send out drones to do their bidding, rather than... well... synths. Which... are already in the game. I'm similarly surprised that synths aren't locked off to the ascension trait as Psyonics have been (unless I'm mistaken). I mean, sure, keep robots and droids open to anyone, but I feel like Synths should be locked behind the ascension if that's what they're going with for the final perk.

Similarly, I was hoping for a little more out of the Biological path. Genemodding is nice, but it still feels very restricted. I feel like you should be able to mod into your species more than to a specific planet type. I feel like the goal of a biological ascension would be to be without any negative traits and be exceedingly adaptive. Capable of living in any climate type. Including Tomb worlds... which... again is already a tech in the game. I also saw an earlier post mentioning Bioships, I think that would be a neat Ascension-perk only un-lockable tech.

In general I feel like that would fit the theme better of 'ascending to utopia' overall.

Agreed. But you're still gonna buy it, right?

 

[Garfazz Steamfang]

The question here is, are synthetics going to have new graphics for ships/buildings? I admit i don't think they are gonna do that but it would be amazing!

 

[BlackPrince]

Awesome stuff! My only hope is that we get more synth portraits. At the very least, have there be one for each phenotype so we can differentiate the former humans from the former reptiles

I agree and so does Asimov:

"(...)My question is, why humanoid robots? I mean that I’ve been taking them for granted all my life, but now it occurs to me that I don’t know the reason for their existence. Why should a robot have a head and four limbs? Why should he look more or less like a man?”

“You mean, why shouldn’t he be built functionally, like any other machine?”

“Right,” said Baley. “Why not?”

Dr. Gerrigel smiled a little. “Really, Mr. Baley, you are born too late. The early literature of robotics is riddled with a discussion of that very matter and the polemics involved were something frightful. If you would like a very good reference to the disputations among the functionalists and anti-functionalists, I can recommend Hanford’s ‘History of Robotics.’ Mathematics is kept to a minimum. I think you’d find it very interesting.”

“I’ll look it up,” said Baley, patiently. “Meanwhile, could you give me an idea?”

“The decision was made on the basis of economics. Look here, Mr. Baley, if you were supervising a farm, would you care to buy a tractor with a positronic brain, a reaper, a harrow, a milker, an automobile, and so on, each with a positronic brain; or would you rather have ordinary unbrained machinery with a single positronic robot to run them all. I warn you that the second alternative represents only a fiftieth or a hundredth the expense.”

“But why the human form?”

“Because the human form is the most successful generalized form in all nature. We are not a specialized animal, Mr. Baley, except for our nervous systems and a few odd items. If you want a design capable of doing a great many widely various things, all fairly well, you could do no better than to imitate the human form. Besides that, our entire technology is based on the human form. An automobile, for instance, has its controls so made as to be grasped and manipulated most easily by human hands and feet of a certain size and shape, attached to the body by limbs of a certain length and joints of a certain type. Even such simple objects as chairs and tables or knives and forks are designed to meet the requirements of human measurements and manner of working. It is easier to have robots imitate the human shape than to redesign radically the very philosophy of our tools.”"

 

[dragoon9105]

But surprised Biological ascension doesn't let you change how your species looks just what traits it has.

 

[Purussaurus]

The game needs to implement the concept of subspecies. When a population is genetically modified it should be considered a subspecies of the original species.

 

[The Founder]

The next step, Synthetic Evolution, requires the ability to build Synths, and allows you to upgrade your cyborg population into fully mechanical forms, finally abandoning the frailty of flesh for the surety of synthetics. When it is complete, you will become a fully robotic empire, with a robotic primary species. Your population will benefit from all the advantages normally conferred to Synths in production and research, and all your leaders will be immortal, able to be killed only in battle or through events. You will also naturally no longer require Food for your synthetic population, instead being replaced by an Energy maintenance similar to regular Synths. You will also be able to name your new, gloriously post-biological people.

Will traits of the original species be totally removed when doing that? I.e., would Thrifty and Agrarian base species become Thrifty and Agrarian Robots, on top of Normal Synth bonuses?
Does our empire just become a bog standart Synth Empire?
What about conquered people? Can we re-apply it?
How will that interact with the Materialsit FE? Highly Spiritualist Empires?
Are the "uploadies" considered the same as normal Synths for mechanic purposes?