Ethics for Machine empires

[Flame13223]

I think ethics should be made available for machine empires. The difference between two machine empires shouldn't just be RP or a couple special civics. We already have civics that fit a certain ethic and if you look through sci-fi you can find examples of robotic beings with a wide variety of ethics too.

Rogue servitors could easily be xenophile.
Determined exterminators are xenophobes ofc.

In BSG the cylons are spiritualists.
Orville has a fanatic materialist robot.
The purifiers in Starcraft Legacy of the Void are millitarists.

And I am sure you guys could name plenty more examples.
Besides we literally had an RP of a communist robotic empire in the dev clash XD


And yes I know a lot these are not entirely hive minded, some have individuality, but that's also something that I miss from Stellaris. Machine empires that are not hive minded.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

I think that Gestalts need some way of utilizing ethics in general. My usual support goes towards "make Gestalt a 2-point ethic and let them take a secondary non-Fanatic ethic to further mechanically define their personality".

 

[Flame13223]

I think that Gestalts need some way of utilizing ethics in general. My usual support goes towards "make Gestalt a 2-point ethic and let them take a secondary non-Fanatic ethic to further mechanically define their personality".

Hmm yes if they had 2 points it could be a balanced way of letting machine empires have ethics.


I've been wondering if perhaps they could get a Synth ascencion too, Cylons had that in Battlestar Galactica basically and it was pretty darn awesome.

 

[Piotrzeci]

I guess it would be problematic as a Gestalt would still be excluded from most events and they have no factions. It's probably better to just keep all special types of Gestalts as civics. There is no real point to have a militaristic Machine Empire, if it's just a Machine Empire that likes conquering stuff.

 

[Flame13223]

I guess it would be problematic as a Gestalt would still be excluded from most events and they have no factions. It's probably better to just keep all special types of Gestalts as civics. There is no real point to have a militaristic Machine Empire, if it's just a Machine Empire that likes conquering stuff.

Access to specific perks, events, bonuses, policies would be pretty good.

 

[metalosse]

I'm more in favor of civics rather than ethics to resolve GC differentiation.

Many ethics don't make much sense mechanically for GC. While I could imagine bonuses of some ethics, for example, authoritarian hive mind would be able to have a leader caste, it would be very different from what regular authoritarianism is.

That means the tooltip would have to show that there are two or three different types each ethic (one for regular empires, one for hive minds and maybe one for machines). This would be actually confusing.

I think using civics would be less confusing and less restrictive.

 

[Piotrzeci]

Access to specific perks, events, bonuses, policies would be pretty good.

There is always a way to add more civics and the civics can also be mutually exclusive, so we can suggest specific ones, that can correlate to Machine Empire style normal ethics.

 

[Flame13223]

I'm more in favor of civics rather than ethics to resolve GC differentiation.

I like civics for very specific cases but for a broader sense of just variation I prefer ethics. Civics should be something ontop of the ethics not a replacement in my opinion.

There is always a way to add more civics and the civics can also be mutually exclusive, so we can suggest specific ones, that can correlate to Machine Empire style normal ethics.

Well, with normal empires you have very specific civics that completely alter your playstyle but there's also a blander approach if you pick civics that are just flat bonuses, and I think that freedom should be available for Machine empires as well. Would more civics be cool? Hell yes it would. But I think we should at least have a more basic variation of ethos' upon which to build said civics. For example with megacorps you have normal ones with various ethos, but you can also change them to a criminal syndicate or prosperty gospel thing with the civics, so the civics there are build on top of something. That's pretty much how I would like Machine empires to be as well.