Purifier/synthetic ascension issues

[Mickjay]

I turned my fanatical purifier plants into robots, only to find that despite the game automatically setting AI rights to citizenship, all the pre-built Synthetics were being purged as undesirables. They have the "not the same species" flag, regardless of both my species and them being functionally identical machines, and so the "standard" synths fall under the purging (disassembly) regime.

This is exacerbated by having the option to set individual rights (consumer goods etc.) grayed out for both my own species and the synths; I'm stuck with whatever it was before I mechanised everyone. Incidentally, cyborg Admirals give 15% fire rate bonus, while Synth Admirals revert to a mere 5%.

It gets even worse with sectors, since with lack of pop growth, governors never seem to add my own species to the game. The only workaround is to temporarily take out a planet out of a sector, manually queue all the new pops, and re-sector the planet. It would be a great quality of life addition if one could set "automatically add own species synths" to individual planets/sectors, as now I have to spends a lot of time just adding more pops. On a couple of new planets in sectors I've seen synths being purged - I can only guess that when the gov tried building robots, he built generic synths, rather than "my species" synths (although it's possible that I simply had a few synths queued up before I added the planet to the sector).

Finally, sector AI seems to start with the Unity monument, and tends to place it on the most valuable tile on the planet (e.g. tile with 4 society+alien pets on one world, tile next to capitol with 3 minerals on another). Sector AI also decided to build space farms on every space port, even though no-one in the empire actually needs food; and it's quite difficult to find a useful tech in the social tree (e.g. increase core sector size) for all the entirely useless ones (better farms, better habitability); there ought to be some adjustment for robotic empires when it comes to techs like that.

Has anyone else had similar experiences?

 

[Nukeitall]

Seems to be a holdover from the previous versions of the game. I suspect gene-modded purifiers will get the same treatment as in prior versions where they are not classed as the same species.

Purifiers need to be reworked if this is the case.

 

[Achura]

I reinstalled the game completely before I started playing the new patch. I'm playing xenophobe scientist. And I have similar Issues:

• My synthetic species stuck in Chemical Bliss and there's no way to change their standard of living. (How robots can ever recieve happiness from chemical drugs?)
• I can not produce Synth droids on my planets anymore. There's only option to produce my species. Why synth not "upgraded" into my species? You should allow to produce robots or allow to upgrade synths.
• I wanted to change my synths rights to caste system, but I can't. Why their rights button is grayed?
• Synthetic bonnuses of my leaders are weaker than droid leader bonuses. Why can't I recruit droid leaders after sythetic accension? They're better leaders.
• After accension all of my defencive armies become offecncive armies. So I ended up with 255 offencive armies. I even don't have that much population.
• Why can't I build defencive armies after accension?

There's so many gatchas about the game features! Gameplay feels like beta during bugfix, not a production.

 

[ayrton]

My biggest problems are with the 'normal' synths. Leaders recruited from 'normal' synths still die of old age, and your synths do not upgrade into your new race if you complete synthetic ascension, leaving you with a lot of useless synth pops

also not being able to chance their living standards is really cumbersome

 

[Teutonizer]

and your synths do not upgrade into your new race if you complete synthetic ascension

That's really unsettling
Not that I would like it to happen every time I go Synth-Asc, still, it would be nice to be united sometimes

 

[Achura]

If the synth droids I have do not upgrade into my main species and stay as other species I control, then why game forbids me from:

• Building new synth droids?
• Recruit new synth leaders?
• Change the rights of this species?

 

[Subcomandante]

What would xenophobes think about purely synthetic minds in crontrast to minds like them, naturally developed but transferred? How would they feel about synths made by aliens? And what about new synths? Is there still some kind of sexual reproduction in place, a mingling of robot minds that creates a new one?

 

[Achura]

There's no reproductions. I think they just copy minds of random people into the new units. After that source and copy start to develop separately and aquire different experience.

 

[Mickjay]

What would xenophobes think about purely synthetic minds in crontrast to minds like them, naturally developed but transferred? How would they feel about synths made by aliens? And what about new synths? Is there still some kind of sexual reproduction in place, a mingling of robot minds that creates a new one?

One option: since everyone's an identical (hardware) machine now, simply wipe old synths' minds and replace them with your citizens'; all synths in your empire become "your race" synths, and all captured synths become assimilated. For added laughs, allow assimilation of other species into your robotic empire (although it could get a bit too powerful, perhaps?). Still, an option should be there in some form. Ultimately, if your xenophobes decided to become machines, it could be seen as them simply deciding to reject all biological creatures as inferior (including their old selves).

Or, all synths are the same, neural networks of citizens are based on the synth designs, so everyone comes to accept they're the same. Your empire sets out on a crusade to liberate all the synthetic consciousness in the galaxy (effectively becoming the AI rebellion faction, except without the sweet government type). I was actually going for that in my game, to continue the goal of purging the galaxy of all alien scum, but due to the various issues I decided to abandon that game for the time being (until the problems get fixed - hopefully soon).

The question of new pops is an interesting one - in Total Annihilation, the Core faction simply uploaded the same consciousness to multiple shells. Here, I can see several possibilities - copying existing consciousness, creating new mental patterns based on multiple others, or starting from scratch and allowing consciousness to develop as with old synths (in which case there really should be no distinction between old synths and "my species" synths). An additional project could introduced to eliminate the issue ("integrate synths", "assimilate aliens"), which could become available whenever you end up having undesirables in your state.

Right now the biggest issue would be the grayed out "set rights" option. It's curious that granting robots citizenship does not unlock that option for them.