As of 3.0, both Synth Ascension and Bio Ascension are objectively superior to Psionic Ascension. They offer faster pop growth, broadly comparable pop productivity bonuses, and broadly comparable beneficial leader traits. The mechanic that is supposed to balance this is The Shroud, but The Shroud is objectively awful due to essentially being a slot machine where you often end up paying 1000 credits to kill a level 10 scientist for no benefit, and so it can't make up for the slower pop growth in a game where the entire meta revolves around having more pops. Additionally, any Psionics playthrough is extremely reliant on getting the Zroni precursors as without them, Psionics is almost unusably bad, uniquely of all 3 Ascension Paths.
Given that the theme of Psionic Ascension is very clearly "do more with less", as you're pretty much bound to end up with fewer pops and thus fewer resources of all types than anyone else when going that route, I feel like the actual mechanics of The Shroud should reflect that. To begin with, it should be far less risky, as no other Ascension Path actively punishes you for using it. Secondly, it should involve catchup mechanisms that allow you to compensate for your inferiority in pop growth. For example, why can you only spy on Fallen Empires with your psionic probes? It should be perfectly fair game to use them to take a sneak peek at your materialist neighbours' weapons research lab and steal some tech through The Shroud. Or why can't you use your psionic powers to just brainwash some of your neighbours' pops into deciding to abandon their past lives and move to your core worlds? Getting rid of the random would help as well. Instead of playing the slot machine, a much more pleasing mechanic would be having some sort of psionic power reserves resource that you use for Shroud interactions, choosing between them and with different ones having different prices.
It would also be nice to have an Origin that lets you start with a Chosen One leader (that probably requires the Imperial Cult Civic or something like that). Bio Ascension has the Syncretic Evolution Origin, Synth Ascension has the Mechanist Origin, Psionic Ascension currently has nothing, while the idea of a Chosen One guiding a previously-primitive civilisation into space has a lot of RP potential. Though to make a Chosen One leader competitive with the benefits of Mechanist or Syncretic Evolution, it would probably have to be somewhat reworked, as currently all Chosen One does is +1 influence and 20% governing ethics attraction, much less beneficial than having two optimised species from the get-go. Perhaps having a Chosen One leader could give some amount of psionic power reserves mentioned in the previous post, allowing for a small modicum of spellcasting even before entering Psionic Ascension, though ideally in some scaling way that makes Chosen One useful even after entering the Ascension Path.
Finally, I believe that Zroni should be either deleted from the game or their benefits completely reworked, as their current state is too influential on the state of Psionic Ascension as a viable path.
EDIT: I also firmly believe that Hive Minds should be able to pursue Psionic Ascension, as Psionic Hive Minds are a common trope in science fiction - heck, even Prethoryn in Stellaris itself are psionic.
Given that the theme of Psionic Ascension is very clearly "do more with less", as you're pretty much bound to end up with fewer pops and thus fewer resources of all types than anyone else when going that route, I feel like the actual mechanics of The Shroud should reflect that. To begin with, it should be far less risky, as no other Ascension Path actively punishes you for using it. Secondly, it should involve catchup mechanisms that allow you to compensate for your inferiority in pop growth. For example, why can you only spy on Fallen Empires with your psionic probes? It should be perfectly fair game to use them to take a sneak peek at your materialist neighbours' weapons research lab and steal some tech through The Shroud. Or why can't you use your psionic powers to just brainwash some of your neighbours' pops into deciding to abandon their past lives and move to your core worlds? Getting rid of the random would help as well. Instead of playing the slot machine, a much more pleasing mechanic would be having some sort of psionic power reserves resource that you use for Shroud interactions, choosing between them and with different ones having different prices.
It would also be nice to have an Origin that lets you start with a Chosen One leader (that probably requires the Imperial Cult Civic or something like that). Bio Ascension has the Syncretic Evolution Origin, Synth Ascension has the Mechanist Origin, Psionic Ascension currently has nothing, while the idea of a Chosen One guiding a previously-primitive civilisation into space has a lot of RP potential. Though to make a Chosen One leader competitive with the benefits of Mechanist or Syncretic Evolution, it would probably have to be somewhat reworked, as currently all Chosen One does is +1 influence and 20% governing ethics attraction, much less beneficial than having two optimised species from the get-go. Perhaps having a Chosen One leader could give some amount of psionic power reserves mentioned in the previous post, allowing for a small modicum of spellcasting even before entering Psionic Ascension, though ideally in some scaling way that makes Chosen One useful even after entering the Ascension Path.
Finally, I believe that Zroni should be either deleted from the game or their benefits completely reworked, as their current state is too influential on the state of Psionic Ascension as a viable path.
EDIT: I also firmly believe that Hive Minds should be able to pursue Psionic Ascension, as Psionic Hive Minds are a common trope in science fiction - heck, even Prethoryn in Stellaris itself are psionic.
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