Stellaris Dev Diary #63: Synthetic and Biological Ascension

[shinkicker]

Really hope there is more than that default robot portraits for synthetic ascension... It will be pretty lame otherwise to look the same as the other generic robots/synths. The 'Flesh is Weak' quest has a picture that looks interesting, so something like that would be much more welcome.

 

[Kat Tsun]

The term "global food" is misleading because what we have now is technically "global food". Perhaps galactic food would be more appropriate.

No it isn't, unless you don't know what variable scope is. In which case that's just innumeracy.

https://docs.thunderstone.com/site/vortexman/variable_scope_global_vs_local.html

 

[Meneliki]

No it isn't, unless you don't know what variable scope is. In which case that's just innumeracy.

https://docs.thunderstone.com/site/vortexman/variable_scope_global_vs_local.html

tbh, although we're talking about 'its not global cuz it's "galactic" cuz its a space game.. i think we all sortof understand when someone says, 'global food'. So in that regard, they're not wrong. The new system introduced with banks could be correctly called 'global food', in game terms. To someone who's never played a computer game before, I can see it being ambiguous, but most of us here have years of experience playing games and we're familiar with the generally understood terminology. Yes, each 'province' is a planet, so 'global' may or may not be technically correct, but we all understand what 'global resources' mean in a strategy game.

Either way, Not worth getting angry over imo.

 

[Kat Tsun]

tbh, although we're talking about 'its not global cuz it's "galactic" cuz its a space game.. i think we all sortof understand when someone says, 'global food'. So in that regard, they're not wrong. The new system introduced with banks could be correctly called 'global food', in game terms. To someone who's never played a computer game before, I can see it being ambiguous, but most of us here have years of experience playing games and we're familiar with the generally understood terminology. Yes, each 'province' is a planet, so 'global' may or may not be technically correct, but we all understand what 'global resources' mean in a strategy game.

Either way, Not worth getting angry over imo.

What?

I'm just saying "global" is in reference to scripting and functions, not the arbitrary adjectives used to describe the game world. In this case, you're moving a variable (food) from a local variable defined by a each function independently to a global variable called by all functions. It's an analogy in this case, though it may have literal truth to it.

It was never anything else, unless this is some kind of dank punnery or something.

 

[Orinsul]

can you cyborgify other species?
do cyborgs that migrate out of your empire stay cyborgs if you go robot?

 

[Xoatl]

No it isn't, unless you don't know what variable scope is. In which case that's just innumeracy.

https://docs.thunderstone.com/site/vortexman/variable_scope_global_vs_local.html

Global has more than one definition. That's obviously the context. But if you said "global" to someone who is more familiar with the more conventional definition you can see where the confusion lies. That compounded by the fact we are talking about whether planet's use separate or pooled food, using the term "global" in this situation opens itself up to a lot of confusion.

 

[Meneliki]

It was never anything else, unless this is some kind of dank punnery or something.

No, it isn't. I just thought you were referring to the semantic difference between Global Food as "Global Food". I.E. A) = Food per planet as per definition and B) Food per empire as per context.

If not, disregard my post!

 

[Anaris]

Okay, lets go ahead and try to start fresh here. I'm sorry I was so dismissive of your misuse of the word unrealistic, it's quite probable you are simply expressing what is a perfectly reasonable thought poorly. I'll try to have an open mind.

I repeat:

But i speak not about profit or diversity of playstyles. I just saying that tame the forces of evolution and don't achieve the immortality looks unrealistic and illogical.

And if you are a prisoner of the illusion of immutability and invincibility of aging - please read at least the popular scientific literature on this topic. I recommend Aubrey de Grey.

200% habitability looks good on paper, but everything past the first 40% is usually wasted. But in biological habitability you match that by tailoring your population to be within the same climate group of that set of planets. Gives a base habitability of 60%, tech advancements bump that up to 70% and a frontier hospital up to 80%. Now, admittedly edge here goes to Synthetics as the biological player needs to engage in two small science projects at a greatly reduced cost to perform those gene modifications.

Now, if you did want to use the 30% adaptation enhancement, which you shouldn't because it's going to cost at least 5 trait points. That would be 30% in addition to the 20% you'd get from Extremely Adaptive for a total of +50% That lets you colonize any planet in the galaxy. Even a tomb world before you get the tech that makes it's base habitability 40% has a habitability of 0%. Your 50% base gets another 10% from technology and 10% from a frontier hospital for a total of 70% habitability. If you get the tech that adds 40% to that you can scrap your frontier hospital. And a complete climate mismatch gets you 80% without the use of a frontier hospital.

20% buff to all production except food is impressive, but erudite gives +20% research and +1 leader level. Proles gives +30% mineral production. Thrifty gives +15% energy production. And delicious doubles food production, if they're livestock. If they're not livestock agrarian gives +15% food. I was being generous when I said match, a good gene engineer caste system will outstrip synthetics in every arena except energy, and maybe in energy too.

Population growth. Synthetics grow at a linear rate of 1 population every 5 years or 30 months. Biological species will grow in a curve, getting their first and most important populations significantly faster, and their last populations a bit slower. Advantage to organics.

Population cost. A synthetic costs 180 energy to produce. That is 150 energy up front, and 1 energy a month for every month of their 30 months of growth. Biological populations grow for free if you simply maintain enough food growth to support your population. Advantage to organics.

Population maintenance. Synthetics cost 1 energy to maintain, organics 1 food. Now, you'd think advantage to organics since synthetics have to treat food tiles like blank tiles, but actually this advantage goes to synthetics. Food over production is an inevitable waste, but there is no such thing as too much energy. Power hubs also create an energy multiplication effect that you don't get with food.

So, while I don't think you understood me before, I hope you understand me now when I say, from what we know right now, Synthetics are less powerful than an organic ascension empire. Maybe that'll change as more information becomes available, so you're only most likely wrong.

Are you trying to say that the biological path may be better if you divide society into 4-5 specialized species, but i'm not sure. Because +1 leader level is worse than immortality with non-replaceable +5 leader level, achieving comparable to synthetic indicators of adaptability achievable price more serious efforts, including the construction of specialized buildings on each planet, and the use of expensive trait on the adaptability instead useful for production. The only indisputable advantage of the biological path is population growth rate.

We're speaking about whether you can say mortality is unrealistic. Realism is, by definition, that which most closely adheres to reality. Old age and death is reality. I hope that explains to you why you should find a different word to use to describe your position.

Okay, i must repeat again:

But i speak not about profit or diversity of playstyles. I just saying that tame the forces of evolution and don't achieve the immortality looks unrealistic and illogical.

I'm so ironical because your words about "realistic aging" seems a... "little" shortsighted. It seems like "4x game about galactical domination don't seems unrealistic without flights to deep space because we still have not found a solution to the problem of radiation".

 

[Kat Tsun]

Global has more than one definition. That's obviously the context.

The context is also obvious once you see "local" or realize we're talking about a variable in maths, though.

No, it isn't. I just thought you were referring to the semantic difference between Global Food as "Global Food". I.E. A) = Food per planet as per definition and B) Food per empire as per context.

If not, disregard my post!

"Galactic food" was a joke/pun introduced in the livestream a couple weeks ago. It has no meaning outside of that, though.

 

[Kat Tsun]

oh.. hmm. that makes me even more confused.

"local food" = food per planet
"Global food" = food on an empire basis
"galactic food" = misnomer. meaningless. ignore this term.

beyond this, spill it to me.

Did you not read the link I posted?

 

[I am Sovereign]

First thing I will do is install a mod which unlocks the synthetic ascension paths for hive minds.

A hive mind based on technology is just to classy for not being able to play it.

Maybe its a bit complicating as by doing so I wouldnt be able to integrate other species into the hive via gene modding or my synth pops will loose their hive mind trait after being transformed but I think there will be a mod for this issue too.

 

[Dmitrius]

Agreed, this seems like a missed opportunity, especially given one of the major plot points of Banks excellent novel Hydrogen Sonata.

Ah, OK, I'm not the most diligent of twitter followers though I'm making more of an effort recently with Wiz's. Sometimes I love being wrong

Cheers Mate.

Edit: Post made in reference to this comment "Wiz confirmed on twitter that Factions will try and resist ascension."

 

[Stoßtrupp Gold]

200% habitability looks good on paper, but everything past the first 40% is usually wasted. But in biological habitability you match that by tailoring your population to be within the same climate group of that set of planets. Gives a base habitability of 60%, tech advancements bump that up to 70% and a frontier hospital up to 80%. Now, admittedly edge here goes to Synthetics as the biological player needs to engage in two small science projects at a greatly reduced cost to perform those gene modifications.
Now, if you did want to use the 30% adaptation enhancement, which you shouldn't because it's going to cost at least 5 trait points. That would be 30% in addition to the 20% you'd get from Extremely Adaptive for a total of +50% That lets you colonize any planet in the galaxy. Even a tomb world before you get the tech that makes it's base habitability 40% has a habitability of 0%. Your 50% base gets another 10% from technology and 10% from a frontier hospital for a total of 70% habitability. If you get the tech that adds 40% to that you can scrap your frontier hospital. And a complete climate mismatch gets you 80% without the use of a frontier hospital.

In my opinion immortality is more a point of roleplaying than of game balance.

But you mention a point where biological way is clearly weaker than the synth way. Either you have to take a trait for a huge amount of rare trait points or you have to mod your species which takes time and resources. So when it comes to habitability nothing compares to the synth way.

PS: Robust is an upgrade from Extremely Adaptable so it replaces it, which means only +30% habitability adaption.

20% buff to all production except food is impressive, but erudite gives +20% research and +1 leader level. Proles gives +30% mineral production. Thrifty gives +15% energy production. And delicious doubles food production, if they're livestock. If they're not livestock agrarian gives +15% food. I was being generous when I said match, a good gene engineer caste system will outstrip synthetics in every arena except energy, and maybe in energy too.

The Proles trait is only available to pre-sentient races, which you have to find or the subservient species of the Syncretic Evolution adv. civic. Both are available to choose/find to both ways.
If i try to gene mod a species as close as possible to a synth, i´ll have to take these traits:
2 points - thrifty +15% energy
2 points - industrous +15% mineral production
4-5 points - erudite +20% research and +1 leader skill level
4 points - venerable +90 years of lifespan
4-5 points - robust +30% habitability and an extra +30 years of lifespan

That´s 16-18 trait points and not possible to get but even if it would be still behind synths: at least: -5 % energy, -5% mineral production, don´t counting habitability and lifespan.

So to close up to the synth the specific techs must give a lot more points, at least three times more.
I know mods will do. But playing competetive with the vanilla version would not be funny.

Huge advantage synth.

PS: You could argue that one could specialise the pops. But that mean a hell of micro-managing.
...and then you can´t be sure the sector doesn´t make a mess of it.

Population growth. Synthetics grow at a linear rate of 1 population every 5 years or 30 months. Biological species will grow in a curve, getting their first and most important populations significantly faster, and their last populations a bit slower. Advantage to organics.

At the point where you ascend your pops to be synths, you will have already a standing empire and can easily resettle one synth per planet to get the new one going or you make the new one attractive to migration. Either way you can built new synths simultaneously.
I see it as a draw.

Population cost. A synthetic costs 180 energy to produce. That is 150 energy up front, and 1 energy a month for every month of their 30 months of growth. Biological populations grow for free if you simply maintain enough food growth to support your population. Advantage to organics.
Population maintenance. Synthetics cost 1 energy to maintain, organics 1 food. Now, you'd think advantage to organics since synthetics have to treat food tiles like blank tiles, but actually this advantage goes to synthetics. Food over production is an inevitable waste, but there is no such thing as too much energy. Power hubs also create an energy multiplication effect that you don't get with food.

Yes it cost a sum and uses up one energy. But with a full synth empire you don´t need food and can build instead energy producing building.
That leaves you with a net win.
And as you can use energy for more important things than only to sustain your people, it is way more worth.
Advantage synth.

So the synths win hands down everytime. Unless we get to use much more gene points.

 

[TankRush]

Nerve Stapled: Removes the ability of the species to feel happiness or sadness. Happiness is disabled and Food/Mineral production increased, but adds major penalties to other resource production.

Chairman Yang approves. In our galactic empires, our people will need to overcome the crass demands of flesh and bone if they are to colonize the galaxy.

 

[Name already in use]

In my opinion immortality is more a point of roleplaying than of game balance.

But you mention a point where biological way is clearly weaker than the synth way. Either you have to take a trait for a huge amount of rare trait points or you have to mod your species which takes time and resources. So when it comes to habitability nothing compares to the synth way.

PS: Robust is an upgrade from Extremely Adaptable so it replaces it, which means only +30% habitability adaption.


The Proles trait is only available to pre-sentient races, which you have to find or the subservient species of the Syncretic Evolution adv. civic. Both are available to choose/find to both ways.
If i try to gene mod a species as close as possible to a synth, i´ll have to take these traits:
2 points - thrifty +15% energy
2 points - industrous +15% mineral production
4-5 points - erudite +20% research and +1 leader skill level
4 points - venerable +90 years of lifespan
4-5 points - robust +30% habitability and an extra +30 years of lifespan

That´s 16-18 trait points and not possible to get but even if it would be still behind synths: at least: -5 % energy, -5% mineral production, don´t counting habitability and lifespan.

So to close up to the synth the specific techs must give a lot more points, at least three times more.
I know mods will do. But playing competetive with the vanilla version would not be funny.

Huge advantage synth.

PS: You could argue that one could specialise the pops. But that mean a hell of micro-managing.
...and then you can´t be sure the sector doesn´t make a mess of it.


At the point where you ascend your pops to be synths, you will have already a standing empire and can easily resettle one synth per planet to get the new one going or you make the new one attractive to migration. Either way you can built new synths simultaneously.
I see it as a draw.


Yes it cost a sum and uses up one energy. But with a full synth empire you don´t need food and can build instead energy producing building.
That leaves you with a net win.
And as you can use energy for more important things than only to sustain your people, it is way more worth.
Advantage synth.

So the synths win hands down everytime. Unless we get to use much more gene points.

I think the main Problem everyone has with Synth Ascension is very simple to explain:

As it is portayed it simply looks Half-Assed... Psi gets the Shroud, new Components, new Traits for species AND leaders... Biology gets new awesome traits, the abillity to add negative ones and remove positive ones...

Synths?
Everyone becomes a synth and thats it... And you need Synths as base tec to even go down this path.... SOOOO

Why should you? You can go down the Bio-path or Psi-path and just build Synths wherever you want, no need to invest in ascension... leader lifespan is only a Issue in early to midgame... when you won't profit from this Ascension.

Why should you invest the valuable points you could use for Mega structures or more Fleet-Capacity,Better Terraforming or Ringworlds for something you could do anyway?
You can Justify anything with RP but thats not the point... the question is:...

WHY SHOULD ANYONE USE THIS?

 

[CrazedSeal]

There's probably events and other background features they aren't revealing until you actually get into the game and see them for yourselves (or I hope so anyway :^). There's probably a reason why the Fallen Empires failed to ascend or fell from their ascension. A question will be the Awakened Empires be able to retry to ascend or something along those lines?

 

[Riftwalker]

And when human beings develop world altering power I'm sure it'll end up in perfectly responsible hands every time (/s). If you are not strong (in terms of military strength) some xeno race will eventually take advantage. Emotions still have very negative sides and the positives can be achieved through sensible thought. Pride causes vulnerabilities, it cannot be a part of a culture that survives the cold darkness of space. I have no problem with multiple cultures, but without an adaptable but stable government periods of instability offer a window for others to exploit.

I'm surprised you were unable to correlate strength with military power instead thinking I meant physical power or symbolism. In either case you give humanity too much credit, if people like Stalin or Hitler can exist once they can exist again and if they obtain means to control people utterly or destroy others they will use it, thinking themselves justified. This is why humanity needs to conquer it's emotional weaknesses or it will destroy itself.

I don't usually comment because i forget how to log in a lot of the time, but i logged in for this.

Emotions are inherently useful, as we evolved them. there are 5 primary emotions with the rest just being specific expressions of the emotion. Happiness, Sadness, Fear, Anger and surprise.

Happiness is a reward system that keeps the individual improving or to maintain the status quo, pride fall's under this, allowing a person to feel ownership for an accomplishment will make them work hard to defend the accomplishment, which will likely result in the individual remaining in a higher status, as an example.

Sadness is a punishment for failure driving us to not be fine with loss, or that an action we committed was "not right" or "unfair". Sadness not only includes depression, but general feelings of guilt, being hurt or vulnerable, or even feelings of lonelyness or home-sickness. they all drive us to try to change our current situation, and on a macro scale to allow us to call or help from society.

Anger is a drive to fix something that an outside force has placed upon you. Anger is the phenomenon of "you miss every chance you don't take" and encompasses outrage to mild disgust, and is generally triggered by adversaries that can be easily defeated or when you feel you have been unfairly pressured in some way.

Fear of course is an emotion for self preservation, and arises as feelings of insecurity, anxiousness, or being frightened.

Surprise is rather interesting as it's pretty much a human emotion, animals don't display it and simply default to fear, human's have adapted an in between stage to ready the body but allow for the transition of the emotion to happiness instead of fear. Human's can realize they've been fooled on an emotional level, animals don't display this, also this feeling arises from both negative and positive acts, such as a surprise birthday party or seeing a bat fly by suddenly during the night.

Reason on the other hand, is not all encompassing, you still have to put weights on what's actually important. is the self important? is society important? is the species important? to what degree should someone try to improve themselves over society or the race if they will never see any benefit from the society or the race? there isn't a "logical" reason any of these are important in the first place, as there's no discernible distinction between alive matter and dead matter, why should any of these be important at all, in the first place? why is it logical that i need food, if it's not important that I survive? we need fear to inform our decision to eat, it's simply how we are.

Emotions have evolved to give us a reason to do things, things that make our Special DNA persist.

edit: to be clear, emotions always have to be the first stopping point, as even if you design emotions to be controlled, the reason these emotional laws/rules are put in place is still derived from us trying to sate our emotions in the first place. any laws made without emotional input will probably not be useful to us.

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

Why should you invest the valuable points you could use for Mega structures or more Fleet-Capacity,Better Terraforming or Ringworlds for something you could do anyway?

Synths have 200% plus to habitability, 20% bonuses across the board, and with this development, will actually become the core species of your empire granting them bonuses to happiness, allowing them to become prominent leaders in factions AND, most importantly of all, allowing Xenophobic Materialist to become a viable play option.

Previously if you tried to construct a xenophobic synth empire, you ended up with an awful "alien overlord" penalty because the game still considered Synths to be lead by the core species and you were never able to appoint Synth leaders. Even if the core species had been wiped out some way, your leaders were still from the core species, and all of your citizen workers were pissed off that they were being lead by aliens.

But now, I can make xenophobic synths. And once I make them, I can cleanse every planet in the galaxy and then take it for myself. EVERY planet. No exceptions.

And that's as things stand now. Hints have been made about updates and changes to robots that may make them far more viable.

 

[AvalancheZ250]

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris dev diary. This week we'll be talking about Ascension again, specifically the Synthetic and Biological Ascension Paths. In dev diary #60 we talked about the Psionic Ascension Path and the associated Shroud. The Shroud was a fairly major mechanical addition to the game, which we felt was needed as Psionics lacked any such mechanic associated with them, unlike the other two. For this reason, the Biological and Synthetic Ascension Paths do not have the same degree of new mechanics associated with them, but rather focus on enhancing the existing mechanics (Genemodding and Robots) that they are tied to.

The Synthetic Ascension Path focuses on abandoning your frail biological forms for that of a perfect machine. The first step, the Flesh is Weak, requires the Droids technology and allows you to modify your entire population through a special project, turning them into cyborgs. This gives them an immediate +20% boost to habitability, as well as bonuses to mineral production and army damage, and also makes any leaders generated from those species have the Cyborg trait granting an additional +40 years of lifespan.
View attachment 244308
View attachment 244303

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.
View attachment 244304

The Biological Ascension Path focuses on mastery of DNA and evolution. The first step, Engineered Evolution, requires the Gene Tailoring technology and grants a major reduction to the cost and time required to genetically modify species, gives you +2 trait points, and also unlocks the ability to research the Gene Seed Purification technology which is otherwise unavailable (it can still be researched as normal for those who do not have the Utopia expansion), allowing recruitment of Gene Warriors.
View attachment 244305

The next step, Evolutionary Mastery requires the Targeted Gene Expressions technology. It grants an additional +3 trait points, a further reduction in time and cost of genemodding, and unlocks the ability to research the Genetic Resequencing technology, which once researched unlocks Advanced Genemodding. With Advanced Genemodding you will be able to add negative traits and remove positive traits, allowing you to completely reshape species at your whim. It also unlocks five new traits that are exclusively available to the Biological Ascension Path:
Robust: Upgrades from Extremely Adaptable, adds +30% habitability and an extra +30 years of lifespan.
Fertile: Upgrades from Rapid Breeders, gives -30% growth time and +5% happiness
Erudite: Upgrades from Intelligent, gives +20% science production and +1 leader skill levels.
Delicious: Makes the species delicious and nutritious, granting +100% food yield from Processing and Livestock.
Nerve Stapled: Removes the ability of the species to feel happiness or sadness. Happiness is disabled and Food/Mineral production increased, but adds major penalties to other resource production.
View attachment 244306
View attachment 244307

Additionally, Advanced Genemodding allows for the ability for non-Hive Mind empires to remove the Hive-Minded trait from Pops and for Hive Minds to add it to Pops, as mentioned in dev diary #62.

That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking a variety of smaller features coming in the Banks update, including the ability to terraform Mars.

I don' really see the point in adding negative traits. I mean, if you want to hurt a particular species in your empire you can just enslave or purge them, adding negative traits would just decrease their resource output and giving them negative traits is bound to give you just as much political backlash as if you enslaved or purged them. Unless you can somehow add negative traits to a species then send it to an enemy empire, which you can't do, then there really is no point.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

So the synths win hands down everytime. Unless we get to use much more gene points.

Your math is flawed- you're trying to mod a whole species to be as close to Synths as possible when you should be looking at modding planets and even particular species on planets to be really good at one or maybe two things.