Robot assembly bugged after Synthetic Evolution

[Speedy15]

After finishing special project and turning all into synths, robot assemblers became buggy.
1. I can produce only old models of robots.
2. I cant choose to produce any of my new "species" models, even first not upgraded model.
3. I can choose to produce new robot models, but although assemblers eats minerals, number of population doesnt increase.

 

[Urza1234]

If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, once your pops become synths arent they just growing naturally?

 

[Speedy15]

No, they are constructed like robots. Biological growth is only from alien immigration.

 

[Kryndude]

I also had the same bug when I went synth with my dwarves.

 

[Speedy15]

Did you fiind any solution to this?

 

[Kryndude]

Did you fiind any solution to this?

No. I figured robot synth are basically the same as my main species synth so I could've just continued but it didn't feel like it and called it a game.

 

[Speedy15]

For me its a game breaker as well. Alas my old robots are expensive and im running into mineral death spiral.
Maybe ill adjust them through game console. Read IDs from save file.

 

[Surimi]

I mean, it does make sense that you can't build new post-organics because if you did they're not really post-organics, they've never been organics and are just synths. The problem is that the interface doesn't make this clear, which raises the question of whether it's intentional or a bug.

You can, however, make identical variants of post-organics and synths who are exactly the same except for name. With robomodding it costs nothing to switch to building a different variant, and synth ascension hugely lowers the cost of robomodding projects.

The main issue ATM is that food is much easier to produce than energy, meaning synth ascended empires run into the same problem as machine empires of just being really hard to maintain (of course, by that point you can have dyson spheres and things so it's a bit easier than having to start out that way, but it's still not the greatest in the current incarnation of the game).

 

[Speedy15]

It clearly is a bug, since there seems no way to increase number of newly developed population. There are all options there but they either doesn't click in, disappear after loading save or when new pop unit should be created.

I generally consider population growth as the weakest part of game, which is counter intuitive, doesn't make sense at all and lead to unbalanced one-way boring play through (make as many colonies as possible and than struggle with micromanagement it).

 

[Urza1234]

I'm going to request that:
A. you file a bug report and
B. you upload a save.

you're not using any mods are you?

 

[Speedy15]

No mods at all

 

[sillyrobot]

I'm going to request that:
A. you file a bug report and
B. you upload a save.

you're not using any mods are you?

It's been reported on the forums since 2.2 hit; it's just not as many people are choosing the synth route because of the largish set of bugs/quality of life issues/ascension power imbalances. I've had it all 3 times I synth ascended; I haven't seen any rebuttal where a player wrote that it didn't happen. The option to build the ascended pop appears, the player can choose it -- and then a regular robot is made.

Unfortunately, a robot with the same traits is not identical to the ascended robot species on a few fronts: a xenophobe can't give full citizenship to the robot, the Contingency affects the robot but not the species, etc.

 

[Urza1234]

It's been reported on the forums since 2.2 hit; it's just not as many people are choosing the synth route because of the largish set of bugs/quality of life issues/ascension power imbalances. I've had it all 3 times I synth ascended; I haven't seen any rebuttal where a player wrote that it didn't happen. The option to build the ascended pop appears, the player can choose it -- and then a regular robot is made.

Unfortunately, a robot with the same traits is not identical to the ascended robot species on a few fronts: a xenophobe can't give full citizenship to the robot, the Contingency affects the robot but not the species, etc.

I dont play a lot of robits, and I also am returning to stellaris after taking a break since like 1.5. I've had my hands on the game for like 2 weeks since then.
I'm familiar with a different bug to do with synthetic evolution, and have already made and released a mod that fixes it ahead of the official patch. If I get more information and maybe a save I might be able to help with this as well.

 

[.......................]

Wouldn't a workaround be making a new bio-pop, putting it to grow on all planets and then harvesting it by assimilation later?

That could fix the issue, I think.

 

[sillyrobot]

Wouldn't a workaround be making a new bio-pop, putting it to grow on all planets and then harvesting it by assimilation later?

That could fix the issue, I think.

Having a helper species allows your ascended pop numbers to continually increase, but the massive increase in robotic growth rate ends up nowhere near as useful as it initially appears.

Assimilation has a whole bunch of negative factors attached to it as well with ruler and specialist pops becoming unemployed for 10-20 years (halved with the right Harmony pick) causing crime, increase CG costs, etc. Not to mention the player's choice of extensive energy-intensive micro or the multiple years of lost production.

 

[Urza1234]

Booting up the save that I used to make that other mod fix, I'm quite easily able to mod my Ascened Synths using the Species window, using Apply Template, just like normal Bio species.
Once my planet has Ascended Synths with my template traits on them I'm able to quite easily choose that template as the Pop that is being assembled, as long as I have the Pop Controls policy enabled.

If that works for you, then imo its working as intended.

 

[sillyrobot]

Booting up the save that I used to make that other mod fix, I'm quite easily able to mod my Ascened Synths using the Species window, using Apply Template, just like normal Bio species.
Once my planet has Ascended Synths with my template traits on them I'm able to quite easily choose that template as the Pop that is being assembled, as long as I have the Pop Controls policy enabled.

If that works for you, then imo its working as intended.

That's works for me too... then a robot is built once the assembly is complete. The problem seems to be inside the code of the assembler. My gut is telling me the assembler is checking the archetype of the base species (BIOLOGICAL) rather than the class of the actual species (ROBOT) and defaults to building the first robot it finds.

ETA: My most recent game I went so far as to remove all robots and robot designs from my empire once I had ascended. Then I gave my species a trait and changed the whole population to match. Then I force-locked all assemblers on my modded ascended species. The assembler built unmodded robots and I had a new unmodded robot design under my species tab.

 

[Urza1234]

That's works for me too... then a robot is built once the assembly is complete. The problem seems to be inside the code of the assembler. My gut is telling me the assembler is checking the archetype of the base species (BIOLOGICAL) rather than the class of the actual species (ROBOT) and defaults to building the first robot it finds.

ETA: My most recent game I went so far as to remove all robots and robot designs from my empire once I had ascended. Then I gave my species a trait and changed the whole population to match. Then I force-locked all assemblers on my modded ascended species. The assembler built unmodded robots and I had a new unmodded robot design under my species tab.

Ah, ok, so thats some good information.
So, I was able to reproduce your problem.

I was also able to succesfully create Ascended Synth Pops by janking around with the Select Species UI. Literally repeatedly clicking around species selection allowed me to correctly select and build my Ascended Synth template.
That actually probably narrows down the problem quite a bit, and my guess tells us that its a UI issue.

This kind of issue seems similar to other UI issues where you have two different windows competing for the same z-axis position. It would make sense if Ascended Synths were generating an extra(blank) select species window in the same position and z-axis.

Try reproducing that. Once your planet has an Ascended Synth pop on it it should show up in Select Species. The little checkmark icon ("selected_icon") isnt showing up for me, but by clicking around the window for my Synth Species ("planet_species_select_entry_specific_species") I'm able to lock it in as the species im assembling. And yes, whats popping out the other end once assembly is complete is the Ascended Synth, not a robot.

Edit: I'm finding the above issue to be very reproducible. If you edit your Ascended Synth species to have a different portrait than your robots, then it becomes very obvious when clicking around on your Select Species panel actually locks your Synth in as the pop being assembled.

Also, I dont know if its working the same for everyone else, but I'm totally able to select my Ascended Synth species for assembly up until I've completed the special project to modify their species to have some traits.

IMO the source of the UI issue here is possibly related to all the issues other people are having when gene editing their Psionics or Driven Assimilator Cyborg founder species.

 

[Speedy15]

I can produce anything i want until i modify it after synth evolution.
AFTER modification (after picking synth evolution) they cant be produced anymore.
UI treats robots and species little different, as robots can be selected and species cant - but BOTH CANT be produced since than.
I repeat - bug is only for modiefied templates. I was able produce plain synth species, alas after upgrading them they disappeared...

I looked into save game and found nothing unordinary there:

{
base=0
name_list="HUMAN1"
name="Omega-Human Citizen"
plural="Omega-Humen Citizens"
adjective="Omega-Human Citizen"
class="ROBOT"
portrait="sd_avi_robot"
traits={
trait="trait_mechanical"
trait="trait_robot_efficient_processors"
trait="trait_robot_durable"
trait="trait_robot_mass_produced"
}
}

Same code for species and template (and almost identical for robots - same class and trait_mechanical, just different "base"), so i guess problem is within game mechanics not UI.
Its not in save either, it bugs without loading game.

 

[Urza1234]

Same code for species and template (and almost identical for robots - same class and trait_mechanical, just different "base"), so i guess problem is within game mechanics not UI.
Its not in save either, it bugs without loading game.

So, as I pointed out I actually am able to produce my modified Ascended Synths, but only by beating on the UI with my mouse. I can modify my Synths, select my Synths, and successfully produce my Synths, reliably.

Other than that I've been able to reproduce your problem. Thats definitely a problem with the UI, though I think it likely that the UI issue is caused by an issue with the game mechanics, because of when and where the bug appears.
As another piece of information, I tried modifying only part of my Ascended Synth species. Doing so, I was still able to correctly select by Robot template and my base Ascended Synth template for assembly completely correctly without issue, but my modified Ascended Synth species still required some UI bludgeoning to be selected.

I saw that you made a bug report. I'm going to go ahead and link this thread in your bug report since it may have value to whoever has this problem land on their desk.

I personally spent about 3 hours testing if it was an issue with a typo, or syntax with the Synthetic Age special project or something, or if it was a problem with the game rules in 00_rules.txt, or if it was an issue with the ROBOT class etc. I dont think the issue is in something that non-developers have access to. I suspect the issue is somewhere in the code for modifying species, since thats exactly when and where the issue shows up. Unfortunately that function is hard-coded and I dont have access to it.