does hive mind belong in the ethos category?

[MGoods]

What would the "ethics" of a hive mind actually represent beyond slightly redundant flavour? What's the difference between a materialist or spiritualist hive mind beyond "one's a hive mind, but sciencey and the other's a hive mind, but mystical."

Very little difference, although the people of that spiritualist republic enemy of mine like them more, so they formed a defensive pact.

The "ethics" that really matters is pacifist/militarist, xenophile/phobe. Will this hive mind attack me? Does it want to be friends? What'll it think if I purge things? What'll it think if I enslave things? Will it help me stop another species from doing either of those things?

It'd be nice if by having long term friendly contact with a hive mind it could decide that maybe some aliens are nice, and it'd be nice if a bunch of empires attacking a hive mind could turn it into a flailing wounded beast intent on purging the galaxy. As it stands, so far, it looks like they'll all just be Hiveminds, responding as hiveminds do to the situation around them, never changing or evolving due to events in the galaxy, whereas with utopia we'll be gaining the ability to influence other empires through the galactic stage.

Of course we should wait to see how it is in game before passing judgement, but I dearly hope that they can have personalities beyond "is a hivemind". If not, we can always mod it of course.

And of course it's worth mentioning that just having them in the game is a major plus! I'll take the mechanics as is quite happily, they can always be expanded upon more later.

 

[MGoods]

Nah, the point of being a hive mind is that you are the species, which means that you're not constrained by anyone else in the management of your empire. You can just pretty much do whatever. Want to be Space Bro #1, form a federation, uplift primitives, protect the weak, and all that good stuff? Cool, just do it. Change your mind after a century and decide to go conquering and purging? That's fine too; your pops/government won't stop you any more than your hand can stop you from committing a murder.

Adding an ethic point to hive minds would serve only to limit your options (and without factions, there'd be no way to change it unless the devs add some other method of doing so). Granted, you'll miss out on ethic specific tech, but I'll be astonished if hive minds don't get some cool unique techs of their own.

That's great from the "player is the hivemind" point of view, especially as you can't have non-hivemind pops so having them agree/disagree is irrelevant, it's the "AI is the hivemind" situation that we'd like more details, and assuming current details are right, variety from.

 

[Alliegorical]

That's great from the "player is the hivemind" point of view, especially as you can't have non-hivemind pops so having them agree/disagree is irrelevant, it's the "AI is the hivemind" situation that we'd like more details, and assuming current details are right, variety from.

Others have already pointed out that civics have a large role in determining AI personality. Hive minds have many civics to choose from, so there will probably be multiple hive mind personalities.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Others have already pointed out that civics have a large role in determining AI personality. Hive minds have many civics to choose from, so there will probably be multiple hive mind personalities.

Also, Hive Minds already exist in the game as a single AI personality type with fixed behaviour, and I never saw anyone complain about that.

 

[MGoods]

Others have already pointed out that civics have a large role in determining AI personality. Hive minds have many civics to choose from, so there will probably be multiple hive mind personalities.

I'm not sure if a "natural neural network" is more or less likely to try to kill me. I dunno, it'll really depends on what those civics do, so far I think that the hivemind civics look more like flavor and buffs and less like personality traits, but it'd be nice if everything I want is already in the cards, we'll see.

 

[Untrustedlife]

I'm not sure if a "natural neural network" is more or less likely to try to kill me. I dunno, it'll really depends on what those civics do, so far I think that the hivemind civics look more like flavor and buffs and less like personality traits, but it'd be nice if everything I want is already in the cards, we'll see.

Look at the bar, on the far right of the image, it looks like we have MANY more options to choose form that aren't displayed, also, they may still be adding more. Its all speculation at this point, i'm sure there are several really transformative civics we havent seen,

 

[MGoods]

Look at the bar, on the far right of the image, it looks like we have MANY more options to choose form that aren't displayed, also, they may still be adding more. Its all speculation at this point, i'm sure there are several really transformative civics we havent seen,

Much of that bar could be greyed out unselectable "regular" civics. But yes, we'll see (and cross our fingers).

 

[Untrustedlife]

How does one deal with a primitive hivemind, surely we couldnt indoctrinate them.

 

[Alliegorical]

How does one deal with a primitive hivemind, surely we couldnt indoctrinate them.

Study them, uplift them (and keep them as a protectorate), wipe them out, or take evolution mastery and mod off the hive mind trait.

 

[V3N0M1300]

Give us the hot code you possess.

It's called having an advanced start neighbor in vanilla stellaris

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

It's alright to do away with ethos if the hive mind-specific civics contain equivalents for every ethos except authoritarian-egalitarian. There's no reason a hive mind shouldn't be able to value war or peace, co-existence or bigotry, or even spiritualism or materialism (depending on how they understand their psionic link). But the only function of ethos for a hive mind would be to affect diplomacy, and civics can handle that just fine.

What's really stupid is the auto-cannibalism. It makes sense that a hive mind can't successfully coexist side-by-side with a non-hive mind species... but why do they have to murder anyone else found on their planets? The inability to make use of other pops is a big enough gameplay limitation, why do we specifically have to eat them? Why can't we relocate or expel them? What if our hive mind can respect the right of individual sentients to exist, even if it can't understand them? This completely clashes with RP as a pacifistic or xenophilic hive mind.

 

[Cagliostro]

What's really stupid is the auto-cannibalism. It makes sense that a hive mind can't successfully coexist side-by-side with a non-hive mind species... but why do they have to murder anyone else found on their planets? The inability to make use of other pops is a big enough gameplay limitation, why do we specifically have to eat them? Why can't we relocate or expel them? What if our hive mind can respect the right of individual sentients to exist, even if it can't understand them? This completely clashes with RP as a pacifistic or xenophilic hive mind.

I'm hoping that they will eventually broaden the concept of what a hive mind can or cannot do, frankly. On the flip side for some ostensibly hive mind species they should be able to exist on non-hive worlds, even if they do poorly (like the renegade Borg). Anyway I doubt that the mechanics will stay the same forever; a lot of time these things get broadened after playtesting, complaints, and suggestions.

 

[Incompetent]

I'm hoping that they will eventually broaden the concept of what a hive mind can or cannot do, frankly. On the flip side for some ostensibly hive mind species they should be able to exist on non-hive worlds, even if they do poorly (like the renegade Borg). Anyway I doubt that the mechanics will stay the same forever; a lot of time these things get broadened after playtesting, complaints, and suggestions.

It looks like the model is of a hard hive mind, where the individual members have evolved over many generations into specialised roles and become physically incapable of functioning independently. Think of the individual cells in a multicellular organism, for example: the nearest they are able to get to 'independence' is when they become cancerous. (A tumour is independent to the extent that a colony of parasites is, except that it generally can't spread from one host to another.) We can imagine that a hive mind may have reactions to non-integrated life on its planets that are more like an immune system response, i.e. it's not a deliberate decision by the hive mind to kill/eat the intruders. Likewise, members of the hive species that are cut off from the collective may just automatically kill themselves, like programmed cell death in multicellular organisms.

The Borg is a completely different story, because it's basically technology bolted onto organisms that are capable of independence. That kind of thing would be more interesting to develop during the game (either as a deliberate player activity, or as a late-game disaster), because it's the kind of thing that could be constructed in the kind of time period covered by Stellaris.

Another alternative hive mind model from Star Trek would be the Changelings. They have apparently evolved as a collective intelligence, but they are also capable of functioning individually. Probably the reason something like this isn't allowed in Stellaris is that it'd be OP compared to a normal 2200 empire.

 

[Untrustedlife]

I wonder if being a hivemind disables sectors.

 

[Fourthspartan56]

I wonder if being a hivemind disables sectors.

Good question, I doubt it does. The gameplay reasons for it still applies and lore wise it could be hand waved as partitioning specific parts of your collective consciousness to be ruled by autonomous drones for greater micro-efficiency.

 

[Untrustedlife]

Good question, I doubt it does. The gameplay reasons for it still applies and lore wise it could be hand waved as partitioning specific parts of your collective consciousness to be ruled by autonomous drones for greater micro-efficiency.

if it does disable sectors, then hive mind is more fun. Since we don't have to worry about happines micromanagement is lower, and I (being the kind of person who absolutely loves micromanagement I would play the heck out of hiveminds if sectors were disabled for them), and the lore is that you are one mind. (Unless that varies depending on civics and it might) Autonomous drones are only there for research and leading fleets.

 

[Surimi]

The "ethics" that really matters is pacifist/militarist, xenophile/phobe. Will this hive mind attack me? Does it want to be friends? What'll it think if I purge things? What'll it think if I enslave things? Will it help me stop another species from doing either of those things?

The thing is, those only really matter in the hands of the AI and as such can be done purely using AI personalities. The same is true for regular empires, in fact. Your pacifist/individualist/xenophiles could be a super-pacifist migratory flock or they could be democratic crusaders who will happily go to war to liberate other empires from tyranny. In the same manner, it wouldn't be hard to implement multiple AI personalities for hive minds.

As it stands, so far, it looks like they'll all just be Hiveminds, responding as hiveminds do to the situation around them, never changing or evolving due to events in the galaxy, whereas with utopia we'll be gaining the ability to influence other empires through the galactic stage.

At present, the same is true of all empires, though. We'll have to wait and see whether AI personalities are being reworked now that civics and ethics are no longer fixed, but if they are then it actually wouldn't be hard to add events which add a chance to switch AI personalities in response to specific situation. The key thing would be making it organic rather than exploitable.

One thing I will venture is that if hive minds are effectively able to completely ignore internal politics, then there needs to be a genuine cost for that. You have to lose something and be subject to some limits, otherwise what's the point in playing anything else? What's kind of odd about these discussions is that you never see people complaining about the restrictions which make hive minds stronger to play. Like, if hive minds can have feelings and emotions and moral systems just like everyone else, why make them immune to happiness?

I actually wasn't a fan of the idea of doing hive minds for these reasons but now they're announced I find myself agreeing with Wiz's design philosophy. If they're going to work, they should have a different playstyle to regular empires, which in some ways has to mean a specific and limited playstyle. Trying to fit every single potential personal RP concept of what could possibly potentially be considered by someone to be a hive mind isn't going to be doable.