Forced species fusion

[Sinister2202]

There should be some mechanic with bio ascension to allow us to fuse multiple species into one. This would be used for better management.

In certain playstyles, having dozens of different species in the list could prove annoying, unnecessary and redundant. Especially if they are all meant to be slaves with similarly modded traits.

This is not the same thing as purge. This is just merging multiple type of species into one or two or more, so the number of pops would be combined and remaining.

 

[Urza1234]

Not entirely sure I understand the issue here.

 

[Novacat]

Not entirely sure I understand the issue here.

The species list gets extremely cluttered mid and late game. What OP is suggesting is giving people with bio ascension the ability to take multiple separate species and make one species out of it. This sounds like a good feature for bio ascension.

If anything, I feel that these changes should be done.

- Give Bio ascension features to merge/split species.
- Give Bio Ascension the ability to more narrowly genetically engineer pops. Bio Ascension should be about being able to specialize your pops for their role. Perhaps, even, a feature that allows your pops to alter themselves to a pre-defined template based on their job. So you can create templates for soldier, technician, miner, scientist, etc and your pops will automatically alter themselves to their chosen template.
- Remove Bio Ascension's ability to remove positive traits and add negative traits, give that to everyone instead, locking it behind Targeted Gene Expressions. Right now, with the way genetic engineering is, you will just alter your pops one or two times and then never touch the genetic engineering feature for the rest of the game. That is dumb.

 

[sillyrobot]

It's certainly possible to do; the code for synth ascension effectively does exactly that.

The two easy paths I can see are to "assimilate" specific species into the founder species of into a new "blank" species. Assimilate is in quotes because I don't think you'd be able to use that specific mechanic; it'd be easier to create a special project that converts all species empire-wide upon completion.

 

[Urza1234]

It's certainly possible to do; the code for synth ascension effectively does exactly that.

The two easy paths I can see are to "assimilate" specific species into the founder species of into a new "blank" species. Assimilate is in quotes because I don't think you'd be able to use that specific mechanic; it'd be easier to create a special project that converts all species empire-wide upon completion.

Thats somewhat iffy. PDX could hard-code it if they want to, but synth ascension is an event script, and idk if you could viably do what the OP suggests with the tools we have now.

Its not ergonomic at all to be able to select a whole species for this purpose in the first place, let alone two species at once. I've looked into this some, trying to reduce clutter in the species screen for a different project, and while its technically possible, it wouldnt be something that someone would actually want to play, way more micro than its worth.

The synth event works because it uses your root species, so its got an easy pre-defined hook. It also doesnt really work right now for the same reason, its been having massive bugs since 2.2 came out, and I'm still seeing bug reports about it to this day.

 

[sillyrobot]

Thats somewhat iffy. PDX could hard-code it if they want to, but synth ascension is an event script, and idk if you could viably do what the OP suggests with the tools we have now.

Its not ergonomic at all to be able to select a whole species for this purpose in the first place, let alone two species at once. I've looked into this some, trying to reduce clutter in the species screen for a different project, and while its technically possible, it wouldnt be something that someone would actually want to play, way more micro than its worth.

The synth event works because it uses your root species, so its got an easy pre-defined hook. It also doesnt really work right now for the same reason, its been having massive bugs since 2.2 came out, and I'm still seeing bug reports about it to this day.

Which is why either applying the founder species or a "blank" species across the board looks easiest. The second is pretty much exactly what synth ascension special project does; it kills the original pop and creates a new "blank" pop in its stead. Putting the founding species instead of a "blank" doesn't look too hard.

I don't mean to imply working on a single species at a time; though some discrimination could feasibly done by adding a 0-point trait that is applied that acts as a filter for which pops to be converted.

 

[Urza1234]

I don't mean to imply working on a single species at a time; though some discrimination could feasibly done by adding a 0-point trait that is applied that acts as a filter for which pops to be converted.

A trait is one way to do it, though there are cleaner ways, but tell me how you're going to pick which species to put that trait on.

 

[sillyrobot]

A trait is one way to do it, though there are cleaner ways, but tell me how you're going to pick which species to put that trait on.

What I'd probably consider is the following:

1) A 0-point trait that indicates the target species. The player creates that race ahead of time. I have to think about what to do in the case where the player creates more than one target species. Probably I'd just choose one arbitrarily.
2) A 0-point trait that can be applied to current population via species modification that signals which pops the player would like to convert (I use this now for later game bio assimilation to synths).
3) A special project that is always available whose cost is dependent on the amount of pops marked for conversion. Upon completion, the script kills the marked pops and creates an equal number of target pops on the colonies.

Subsystems whose interactions are potentially problematic:
1) Housing. Depending on traits, you can end up in a sudden housing crisis similar to what synths face upon completion.
2) Job assignment. Removing a bunch of pops across the strata and inserting a bunch of new ones with different traits risks widespread ruler and specialist unemployment -- similar to what cyborg/synth assimilation experiences.
3) Colony ships, initial colonization, and pop growth. Unlike synth ascension that converts everything, anything in a state where it can't be marked would be remain and potentially grow into the old species.
4) Updating the species list. Completely removing the species from the species list would require more care because of point #3.

 

[Urza1234]

2) A 0-point trait that can be applied to current population via species modification that signals which pops the player would like to convert (I use this now for later game bio assimilation to synths).

Yes this is the best one that came to my mind, the problem is that you're gating a simple quality of life change behind the cost of species modification, which is a hard-coded system thats not very flexible afaik.

1) A 0-point trait that indicates the target species. The player creates that race ahead of time. I have to think about what to do in the case where the player creates more than one target species. Probably I'd just choose one arbitrarily.

I dont think this really solves the problem, we are talking about combining species with different IDs, but identical traits, are we not? If you're talking about just flat converting other random species to your founder thats much easier, but I dont think I would support that.

3) A special project that is always available whose cost is dependent on the amount of pops marked for conversion. Upon completion, the script kills the marked pops and creates an equal number of target pops on the colonies.

There is a change_species effect.