So am I just missing something or playing wrong or are psi's just a gimp path that would need some love?
Has been a gimp path for as long as I've known stellaris (which is from lunch till utopia and nowadays, don't see anything in patch logs to indicate that it's ever been better either). Even when it wasn't about ascension, and just about "spiritualism for psi VS materialism for synthetics" it was the weaker option. Almost nothing about that (about psionics) changed for the better since then.
By pure coincidence, no doubt, it's now not quite as sucky as it used to be. Maybe even slightly superior. Not because of how "great" the benefits in general are, but primarily because synthetics stopped being so freakishly overpowered, and fleet mobility has been bound and gaged so much that the advantage of psi jump drive over normal jump drive became more of a factor.
Psi has amazing leaders...
Synthetic leaders are immortal. Things don't get more amazing than that. True, there are some good bonuses (screw you, Latin grammar nazis) on psi perks, but compared to being able to keep your best leaders virtually forever it doesn't quite shine.
Even if you are ok with mortal leaders (venerable build user?) carefully hand-picked (keep the best, cycle the rest) leaders aren't far behind. Meanwhile in many other respects psi IS far behind the alternative. *sigh* I miss the days where I could build a high min level leader pool, forget the f-ing lifespan and just rotate my pack of leaders as I see fit.
And keep in mind that with the recent qq about how robots/droids/synths no longer give crazy fast population advantage combined with extra efficiency, like they unreasonably used to for so freaking long, it's quite likely that PI will cave in and buff them back up to the point where spiritualism, along with it's psi path, is a bad joke again.
Seriously, I FINALLY can forgive my min-maxing self for NOT going materialists + robotics, and subsequently can actually not go materialists + robotics. Don't make me lose that option again, tyvm.
I wish PI and stellaris players in general started to get a clearer picture of ethics balance. If there's an ethic that's supposed NOT to use something it should have an alternative to that something that's competitive. In other words you can't make slavery much stronger than whatever it is that xenophilia/liberalism (or any government set that doesn't include the option for slavery, really) give you. Same with robotics, it shouldn't be much stronger than whatever spiritualists get in return for not being able to use it.
THANKFULLY we have bio ascension which means you aren't screwed just cus you can't go cyber, but the rest of the materialist vs spiritualist balance is a joke. Well, used to be anyway, it's quite possible some of my ideas are not up to date with modern stellaris.
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