Ascension Perk Elimination

[RedPearlA]

I’m curious how well this will work next patch with habitats costing alloy upkeep, I guess it depends on how they tune it.

Ofc it’s not material to our current discussion, where it’s more a question of what you are using your purple mana for.

I have been theory crafting but there is a lot of numbers I don't know yet. I am very excited about the new economic system. I am playing Ascension Perk Elimination to help with the wait for December 6th.

Interstellar Dominion: 24
Voidborne: 7 (+1)
Master Builders: 4
Galactic Wonders: 5 (-2)
Synthetic Ascension (The Flesh is Weak + Synthetic Evolution): 14
Psionic Ascension (Mind over Matter + Transcendence): 16

All of these perks are so good but I have to vote against something. I voting against GW because you can only build 1 at a time where as the ascension paths apply to all your pops and leaders on every world.

 

[John Rusher]

I know I've had this discussion before, though I don't know whether I've had it with you specifically...

How, exactly, are you playing this game, where you actually need to spend all or even a majority of your minerals on warships in order to conquer something in the mid game?

When I beat the 5x grand admiral contingency and their >20 million combined starting fleet power, I owned over half the galaxy, and had a research nexus and a Dyson sphere and 1.5 - 2.5 ringworlds and habitats... I dunno, I'd have to revert the game version to count them but let's say 20-30. And had a fleet that gave me significant negative income out of port despite having something like 2000 fleet cap.

If you have so little mineral income that you actually need to spend it all on warships to win a war in midgame, you have too little, or you're spending too much of it on upkeep of warships you don't actually need.

In late midgame, I've got 10s of thousands of minerals I need to spend on something. My limiting factor on rebuilding my fleet against the contingency wasn't minerals, but # of shipyards. My positive income was around 8000 after dealing with hub #2 (from a low of about -3000 when the crisis started), since my fleet was down to like 1300 cap and the ghost signal weakened. Since my net income kept swinging back and forth... Well, I had to go back to building habitats and ringworlds when it was high, or I'd cap out my 125k storage or whatever


Buuut... These are subtractive discounts. When you already have -40% from fanatic xenophobe, -20% is actually -33%.

My favorite game was a spiritualist fanatic xenophobe with parliamentary system, rushing all the outpost discounts. I had 213 systems before I even had to declare war; when an outpost costs 18 influence, no one can cut you off

Playing in an empty galaxy I see?

 

[Ur-Quan Lord 13]

Playing in an empty galaxy I see?

The 213 system one, I was a little lucky that there were 3-4 nearish empires and 1 FE by me, the rest were on the other side. Size 600 I think?

Was only hard difficulty too (this was before the difficulty rework). Maybe before clusters? I forget, did we have clusters when 2.0 launched?

But, I snaked past the nearby empires and boxed them in. Again, with 18 cost outposts (and a little luck) they won't have a chance to cut you off.

Pre-clusters, at least

Edit: I did end up with enough income to field a 2000 cap fleet, despite naval cap still being limited at 1000. The crisis was only 3x hard, so it was enough.

 

[Holiness]

Interstellar Dominion: 24
Voidborne: 8 (+1)
Master Builders: 4
Galactic Wonders: 5
Synthetic Ascension (The Flesh is Weak + Synthetic Evolution): 12 (-2)
Psionic Ascension (Mind over Matter + Transcendence): 16

 

[John Rusher]

The 213 system one, I was a little lucky that there were 3-4 nearish empires and 1 FE by me, the rest were on the other side. Size 600 I think?

Was only hard difficulty too (this was before the difficulty rework). Maybe before clusters? I forget, did we have clusters when 2.0 launched?

But, I snaked past the nearby empires and boxed them in. Again, with 18 cost outposts (and a little luck) they won't have a chance to cut you off.

Pre-clusters, at least

Edit: I did end up with enough income to field a 2000 cap fleet, despite naval cap still being limited at 1000. The crisis was only 3x hard, so it was enough.

Lucky start kk. Try playing in spiral galaxies with max civilizations, they are harder to expand in, because they have higher amounts of roadblocks. You cannot simply surround AI enemies there by building outposts. At best, you can get outpost cutting them off from one of expansion routes, but surrounding them is completely impossible, without declaring war on them.

IE : the more closed map is, the less use you will get from the perk.

 

[Tavior]

Interstellar Dominion: 24
Voidborne: 8
Master Builders: 4
Galactic Wonders: 5
Synthetic Ascension (The Flesh is Weak + Synthetic Evolution): 13 (+1)
Psionic Ascension (Mind over Matter + Transcendence): 14 (-2)

I am going to pick PSI again for the same reason. There is no predictable or reliable reward for going down this path unlike Synthetic which you can count on despite the diplomatic negative side-effect.

 

[John Rusher]

I don't understand why interstellar dominion is getting so much upvotes, and almost no downvotes.

I think people mistake it for core creation cost, which it is not.

Consider this : In game like EU4, 20% core creation cost reduction would be great. But you don't get this in stellaris, instead you get 20% less claim fabrication cost most of the time. Unless you play in empty galaxy, then it is something like 20% faster colony growth would be for EU. Which isn't all that bad, but it is not some OP perk.

 

[Mastikator]

Interstellar Dominion: 24
Voidborne: 8
Master Builders: 4
Galactic Wonders: 5
Synthetic Ascension (The Flesh is Weak + Synthetic Evolution): 14 (+1)
Psionic Ascension (Mind over Matter + Transcendence): 12 (-2)

I don't understand why interstellar dominion is getting so much upvotes, and almost no downvotes.

I think people mistake it for core creation cost, which it is not.

Consider this : In game like EU4, 20% core creation cost reduction would be great. But you don't get this in stellaris, instead you get 20% less claim fabrication cost most of the time. Unless you play in empty galaxy, then it is something like 20% faster colony growth would be for EU. Which isn't all that bad, but it is not some OP perk.

It's also -20% claim cost. If you're surrounded by jerks then effectively you can either claim MORE or you have more influence left over for production targets or whatever.

Whether you are surrounded by empty space or jerk empires Interstellar Dominion is an awesome first pick. Definitely the strongest for most empires, probably for all empires.

 

[Jmes Snowscoran]

I don't understand why interstellar dominion is getting so much upvotes, and almost no downvotes.

I think people mistake it for core creation cost, which it is not.

Consider this : In game like EU4, 20% core creation cost reduction would be great. But you don't get this in stellaris, instead you get 20% less claim fabrication cost most of the time. Unless you play in empty galaxy, then it is something like 20% faster colony growth would be for EU. Which isn't all that bad, but it is not some OP perk.

Well, Stellaris and EU4 plays very differently, especially in the early game. Where EU4 sets up with a map that's mostly painted, Stellaris' is mostly empty. To grow powerful and secure access to resources, colonizable planets and key systems, you need to expand fast, and that's what ISD lets you do.

 

[WhapXI]

I think people mistake it for core creation cost, which it is not.

I think it's more because playing the aggro expansionist empire means that you're constantly expanding, either into empty space or into hostile space. The limiting factor for a player doing well (i.e., having enough minerals to build starbases and a large enough navy to conquer claims) is the influence needed to build starbases or create claims. A lot of people consider this the best way to play the game, and therefore saving influence off of what you mostly use it for is best.

 

[Retry]

Interstellar Dominion: 24
Voidborne: 8
Master Builders: 4
Galactic Wonders: 5
Synthetic Ascension (The Flesh is Weak + Synthetic Evolution): 15(+1)
Psionic Ascension (Mind over Matter + Transcendence): 10(-2)

 

[PirateJack]

Interstellar Dominion: 24
Voidborne: 8
Master Builders: 2 (-2)
Galactic Wonders: 5
Synthetic Ascension (The Flesh is Weak + Synthetic Evolution): 16 (+1)
Psionic Ascension (Mind over Matter + Transcendence): 10

 

[pryr]

Interstellar Dominion: 24
Voidborne: 8
Master Builders: 2 (-2)
Galactic Wonders: 5
Synthetic Ascension (The Flesh is Weak + Synthetic Evolution): 14 (-2)
Psionic Ascension (Mind over Matter + Transcendence): 11 (+1)

Because slavery with psionics is better and more fun.

 

[Hapchazzard]

Interstellar Dominion: 24
Voidborne: 8
Master Builders: 0 (-2, eliminated)
Galactic Wonders: 5
Synthetic Ascension (The Flesh is Weak + Synthetic Evolution): 15 (+1)
Psionic Ascension (Mind over Matter + Transcendence): 11

As much as I'm tempted to downvote PSI ascension again, I cannot do it in good faith as, with all it's faults, it's still better than Master Builders. I'm actually genuinely surprised it has lasted this long. I mean, +50% megastructure build speed and +3 habitat size is nice, but not nearly good enough to be adequate competition for the remaining perks. Am I missing something about it? Either way, it's a moot point anyway since it's eliminated now.

 

[Halatung]

Interstellar Dominion: 24
Voidborne: 6 (-2)
Galactic Wonders: 5
Synthetic Ascension (The Flesh is Weak + Synthetic Evolution): 16 (+1)
Psionic Ascension (Mind over Matter + Transcendence): 11

 

[Tyrannical Prince]

Interstellar Dominion: 24
Voidborne: 4 (-4)
Galactic Wonders: 5
Synthetic Ascension (The Flesh is Weak + Synthetic Evolution): 16
Psionic Ascension (Mind over Matter + Transcendence): 12 (+1)

 

[Hapchazzard]

I don't understand why interstellar dominion is getting so much upvotes, and almost no downvotes.

I think people mistake it for core creation cost, which it is not.

Consider this : In game like EU4, 20% core creation cost reduction would be great. But you don't get this in stellaris, instead you get 20% less claim fabrication cost most of the time. Unless you play in empty galaxy, then it is something like 20% faster colony growth would be for EU. Which isn't all that bad, but it is not some OP perk.

People are much more invested in seeing their favored of the remaining two ascension paths come out on top compared to the other, hence they use their downvotes to downvote the other obvious 'contenders'. Look at how many people are exclusively focused on upvoting and downvoting just psionic and synth ascension. This drives the points of both paths down a lot. Voidborne and galactic wonders are also pretty controversial at this point in regards to how truly 'useful' they are, so people are using downvotes for that too. Interstellar dominion is very uncontroversial compared to the other options, and hence most people overlook downvoting it completely. Me, personally? I haven't used it in a long time because I don't really play as an expansionist, so I can't really vouch for or against it.

 

[SuiciSpai]

Interstellar Dominion: 24
Voidborne: 2 (-2) (the vote before this one it says -4 but correctly subtracted just 2)
Galactic Wonders: 6 (+1)
Synthetic Ascension (The Flesh is Weak + Synthetic Evolution): 16
Psionic Ascension (Mind over Matter + Transcendence): 12

 

[Pointyearedgit]

Interstellar Dominion: 24
Voidborne: 2 (-2) (the vote before this one it says -4 but correctly subtracted just 2)
Galactic Wonders: 6 (+1)
Synthetic Ascension (The Flesh is Weak + Synthetic Evolution): 16
Psionic Ascension (Mind over Matter + Transcendence): 12

Happy to see Voidborne outlasted Master Builders, but it's time for it to die now. ID is just useful with more empires, despite the fact that VB is a great perk when it applies.

It was perhaps a little unfair that VB and MB were not linked like the ascension paths, because they basically work together but its weird like the Synthetic Ascension path so I'm fine with it being dealer's choice (and I would vote TFiW higher than Synthetic Evolution in the case they were separate for similar reasons to MB and Voidborne).

Interstellar Dominion: 25(+1)
Voidborne: 0 (-2) ELIMINATED
Galactic Wonders: 6
Synthetic Ascension (The Flesh is Weak + Synthetic Evolution): 16
Psionic Ascension (Mind over Matter + Transcendence): 12

 

[Vonuggbin]

Interstellar Dominion: 25
Galactic Wonders: 6
Synthetic Ascension (The Flesh is Weak + Synthetic Evolution): 14 (-2)
Psionic Ascension (Mind over Matter + Transcendence): 13 (+1)