Herbert change to Species Modification on special traits.

[Franton]

Select "Slugged" Colonists when building new colonies.
And say Hello to super slow colony growth.

It just occurrd to me, what if your main (slugged) pops are Necrophage, you let your secondary species grow, and then convert them with Elevation chambers - would that duplicate the slugs onto the elevated pops?

 

[John MacWhat]

Well as long as you have the Psionic Ascension Perk you can still assimilate them. You just won't be able to apply the template however.

Maybe this was a niche case, but I ran into a situation where this wasn't allowed. I was a fanatical purifier with lost colony origin. My empire did psionic ascension so my pops became psychic. The species homeworld empire didn't have this trait, and I could not set them to assimilate because their rights were locked due to being the primary species. I also had the orbital speed demon trait on my empire species.

 

[Shark7]

My problem with this is simple. I do not want 4-5 different subspecies of my founder species in my empire. It's the exact reason why I do not allow crossbreeding in my games. It clutters the species tab to the point it can barely open, makes the list impossible to scroll, and managing all those sub-species will no doubt cause no end to end game lag. Calling it a chaotic mess is being kind.

If, as I understand it, I can neither transfer the trait to another sub-species or at least remove it from the current one, then I am fully against it.

I have looked into the files, I think I see how they changed it. I think it will be a simple task to mod the game to be like it was. However, I bet the mod would disable achievements. Not an issue for me, I don't care about achievements, but for those that do, it looks like you are stuck with the change.

With the "fix" the only way to avoid the chaos is to simply not accept the brain slugs or other special traits.

 

[Brael]

My problem with this is simple. I do not want 4-5 different subspecies of my founder species in my empire. It's the exact reason why I do not allow crossbreeding in my games. It clutters the species tab to the point it can barely open, makes the list impossible to scroll, and managing all those sub-species will no doubt cause no end to end game lag. Calling it a chaotic mess is being kind.

If, as I understand it, I can neither transfer the trait to another sub-species or at least remove it from the current one, then I am fully against it.

I have looked into the files, I think I see how they changed it. I think it will be a simple task to mod the game to be like it was. However, I bet the mod would disable achievements. Not an issue for me, I don't care about achievements, but for those that do, it looks like you are stuck with the change.

With the "fix" the only way to avoid the chaos is to simply not accept the brain slugs or other special traits.

I think the steam workshop already has a mod out for it. I’ll be using it in my next game, the Species window is bad enough as is that I’ll only play synthetics or necrophage. This makes it a lot worse.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

Haven't read the entire thread, just spotted it now and noticed the question: 'why'.

Maybe someone suggested it before, but my understanding of the 'why' is this:

(a) in-game: those modifications are not gene-based, and therefor not subject to geneteic engineering. E.g. the brain slugs are not some part in your DNA, they are separate organisms! While you could argue that such organisms might be cloned, that still doesn't allow you to build it into your DNA. (not sure to what extent this argument can be made for all of the modifications in question, but AFAIK most of these traits originate from outside events, they are not inherited from a parent.)

(b) out-of-game, the stacking of benenficial traits from events was never meant to happen: e. g. your pops could go psionic, or cyborg, but having the effect of both would be OP. You could argue that this stacking is required to keep up with Synth ascended empires, but that is a question of balancing and goes beyond the scope of 'why'

We do not know why. It hasn't been communicated at all. Speculation on the why is pointless and we can all imagine a dozen wrong reasons for this change.
The issue here is a gameplay issue. It is a change that makes the gameplay worse with no upsides.
If it is part of a bigger redesign, then it should have waited for the rest of that redesign.
If it is a stand-alone change it is bad, because it lower the quality of the gameplay experience.

a) I can come up with an explanation for why all of these event traits can be changed via gene-modding. Making up some random fictional reason is liuterally pointless and I can make one up for each one you do. It all boils down to "The composer of strands, which does not exist, has no authority, agency or thoughs, thinks t hat'S how it should be"

b) It has been happening and been supported for almost two thirds of the games' existence. "Never meant to happen" for a thing that has happened for 4 years is a weird claim to make.
And it is not a question of balance, because most of these bonuses are relatively minor at the stage where it is workable to apply them broadly.

 

[Franton]

the Species window is bad enough as is that I’ll only play synthetics or necrophage. This makes it a lot worse.

Yup. I'd really like some more accessible way to gene-mod the base species away. Or just let us combine all species with the same traits into one entry rather than having to deal with 23 entries of different species with the exact same traits.

 

[Shark7]

Yup. I'd really like some more accessible way to gene-mod the base species away. Or just let us combine all species with the same traits into one entry rather than having to deal with 23 entries of different species with the exact same traits.

Or better yet, let's restrict the AI's ability to gene mod 40 million new species into the game.

The problem with gene modding and crossbreeding are the same...the AI does not know when to stop.

 

[Brael]

Yup. I'd really like some more accessible way to gene-mod the base species away. Or just let us combine all species with the same traits into one entry rather than having to deal with 23 entries of different species with the exact same traits.

Setting a preferred species variant might be an interesting way to do this. Kind of like a mini assimilation, you could think of it as a species merging their traits together over successive generations until they're all the same. Merge them passively at the same rate as assimilation but without the happiness penalty.

Then revamp xeno compatibility to allow for a target main species for the variants to fall under over time (let things cross breed multiple times, but only get the bonus once). So that eventually everything migrates to being under the same main species/template. That would allow for quite a bit of merging and fix an ascension perk that a lot of people don't like taking specifically due to UI issues, within the same system.

The reason I think it would be best to do it this way rather than through gene modding, is there's a very real possibility that Psionics will want these same mods, the species window should be useful to them too afterall. And, it's fairly important for this to be accessible to any path, even Synthetics might want to keep some biological pops around, or biologicals wanting to mod some machines. But if you don't have enough points to mod the species right now, you're stuck.

 

[Franton]

over successive generations

It just occurred to me: for a species under pop controls, there shouldn't *be* successive generations! The game already has the declining species mechanism, so why isn't it used for species under pop control?

 

[r3xm0rt1s]

It just occurred to me: for a species under pop controls, there shouldn't *be* successive generations! The game already has the declining species mechanism, so why isn't it used for species under pop control?

Population controls means maintaining current population. Do not mistake it for neutering purge and neglect to play a xenophobic empire.

 

[Losttruppen]

• Fixed unmodifiable traits so that you can now correctly remove special habitability traits, along with various other traits that you were not meant to be able to add but it was fine to remove. Also allowed you to apply existing species templates containing such traits to the rest of the species. (This mainly covers flavour-based traits - there are still some such as Mechanical or Psionic or Necrophage which you will not be able to add or remove via species modification).

This is in the 3.3 patch notes, "traits that you were not meant to be able to add". These traits worked fine for 5 years, I am still unclear on who asked for this change or why it was made, and the consensus seems to be that it has created more problems than it "solved".

What is the point in pursuing these rare, sometimes tedious, efforts to acquire a 5% bonus if they will affect less than 1% of my total pops? Of all the balance issues this game has, which have been brought up time after time by the community without being addressed, this one came out of the blue and has some very annoying consequences which exacerbate existing UI issues in colonization, species, and planet tabs.

I think I would prefer a main species purge option than deal with this any longer.

 

[Gromit]

You will have your chaotic species list... And you will be happy.