Should bio ascended clones be able to make unlimited clone vats?

[Tetranet]

Rare end-game resources like nanites need to be more useful, and nanites affecting the ancient cloning vats would be a great interaction.

It's not a random choice, as when the descendant path is selected, the disassembly of the vats provides nanites among other things, suggesting they are critical to their operation.


Similarly, I would like to see more interactions of Psionic Ascension with Zro. These end game resources lend themselves well for this role.

 

[DeanTheDull]

I understanding wanting more clones, but there's a serious balance factor that can't be supported by just food or even resources that can be indefinitely scaled at cost. The pop-assembly rate is just too damn big as-is. At +9 pop assembly per ancient clone lab on planets under 10 pops, any system that lets you freely sustain more pops gets into a basic pop harvesting issue.

What is your balance to prevent the player from just parking all 5 (or more) ancient clone vats on a world for +45 pop assembly and letting the clones auto-migrate? Especially when all of those pops are getting +25% specialist output modifiers?


Nanites are 'nice', but any resource that you can get indefinite numbers numbers of on the galactic market is not a viable blance. You'd just invest your pops to cover the cost and buy more pops with the profit.

The best I can think of is to provide a way to raise the pop-cap, not the assembly, but even have that limited on a per-planet basis.

Consider a Perfection-unleashed 'Clone Sustainment' building, limit 1 per planet. The building provides +10 clone pop sustainment, but 0 pop assembly. It's literally just there to keep your clones from dying, but you're having a small clone population at best- effectively +10 clone pops per planet you own, and raising your empire limit by 10 per planet conquered. You'd still populate new planets fast, but your existing worlds would still need outside alien pops to be exceptional.

Maybe you then upgrade the sustainment building with cost/strategic resources. Say an either-or substitute of the Bio-Ascension clone vault. The upgrade raises it to 20 pops, letting you have more.

(Though if this is too generous, you can always balance the numbers. Maybe Tier 1 gives you 5 pops- enough for 2 rulers, a district, and a district modifier building- and Tier 2 gives 10. Or whatever.)



The point is, the empire limit of pop can raise on a per-planet basis, but raise slower than what you'd get if you conquered like you're supposed to. Perfect ascension's +40% rulers/25% speciailists might make a 20 pop planet as productive as 25 pops, and be reachable easier, but it'd still have later-game dropoff.

 

[majikero]

Things I thought up to balance clones and let you play as clones.

1) The clone vats themselves. They should be 3-4 pop assembly. Better than regular vats but not really OP.

2) The clone trait should provide bonus to pop assembly and penalty to growth. No matter what path you take, this should persist so you're encourage to propagate via clones.

3) Capital building and gene clinics to increase pop limits. Gene clinics jobs would change to clone engineer or something.

4) The clone phase is too short. They should require at minimum the same tech to go down bio-ascension. Once you have the tech, you can start the special project to research the clone vats in three steps. Step 1 permanently destroy a clone vats and reduce your maximum limit. Step 2 is the choice on which path you take and destroy another clone vat. Step 3 finishes the change. Step 4 is reverse engineer the vats themselves, either to repurpose them as clone descendants so they can use 3 weaker but still better than normal clone vats without bio ascension. The clone path should be a choice between following the super soldier path or forging your own destiny for a much broader spread of traits. As ascended clones, reverse engineering the vats should give the gene clinic pop assembly similar to hives having pop assembly jobs.

 

[Vorpaliminal]

While this thread is all about being able to use your clones more widely, I think I got an idea on how to use them as they are now. Choosing Ascendancy makes you keep the clone vats throughout the entire game, so why not put them to use? Instead of just sustaining your clones with them, why not use the vats to rapidly develop new colonies and let your conquered xenos fill in the void they leave behind? You can replace the Ancient Cloning Vats with a normal Cloning Vat or Robot Assembly Plant to help accelerate the replacement process.

 

[Me_]

It certainly seems like this "biological mastery" isn't really a mastery but some bachelor's degree at best.

 

[Zoomy]

I think you should be able to build additional ones, but not without jumping through some major hurdles. It should be at least require an ascension perk and nanites to initially build it at the very least.

The origin is decent the first few decades, but will quickly become a hindrance if you keep the clone lifestyle, but if you are forced to wait until the L-Gate opens before getting the resources required to build new Vats, it should prevent the clones from being overpowered compared to other origins.

The L-Gate is part of Distant Stars, a separate paid DLC to the one that introduces Clone Soldiers. You're proposing selling half an origin with one DLC and the other half with another.

 

[Oculument]

The L-Gate is part of Distant Stars, a separate paid DLC to the one that introduces Clone Soldiers. You're proposing selling half an origin with one DLC and the other half with another.

Genius!

 

[evilcat]

There certainly is a problem that right now the only ascension avaiable is Psionics. Synth no, since that will make us loose our super perks if we plan to keep full potencial. And no Bio, since we cant gene edit our clones any more. So only Psionics are left. It would be fun to have still evolving clones to more and more perfect form.

I am in favour of some Bio ascension and clones interaction, but have no idea for now how to do it.

 

[Aepdneds]

Just out of interest, if there is a second clone empire can you conquer their clone vats to go over the limit?

 

[HFY]

Just out of interest, if there is a second clone empire can you conquer their clone vats to go over the limit?

Imagine a galaxy with only Clone Army empires, like some kind of terrifying zero-sum game.

 

[Farbros]

What would happen if I go into machine ascension with this origin? Would I still build clones + robots and have to constantly morpf my new clone species into robots or how do they interact with each other?

 

[hart30]

The whole clone origin is currently getting banned throughout the whole multiplayer community. It is more powerful than shattered ring ever was before the nerf. This should indicate, that this origin is already powerful enough as it is. It really does not need any further advantages.

Also, there is lore behind those ancient clone vats. They were build with nanites by the ancient l-cluster empire. And thats the reason normal clone vats just cannot do the trick. The knowledge how to create nanites is lost in time. Sure, u can find them, but apparently not program them to make new clones.

 

[majikero]

Its powerful because of the admiral bonus. Once you conquer someone, you can grow like any other empire but you still have the OP admirals.

It plays less like clones and more like space marines. Its quality over quantity, which is the opposite of what you'd expect from clones.

 

[Numida]

Maybe 1 per planet, but not unlimited. No, way, na-ah. Have you seen those insane species traits they get if you choose to ascend? Combined with the pop growth provided by the vats, if you get to ascend early in the game, you can crush any other neighboring empire. And then combine that with having other species as supplementary. That'd be broken as hell.

 

[Hunnuli]

. . . after giving them a go I find them just kinda shrug worthy. I have two major problems with them. Also the ascended traits can be kinda nuts which makes them rather difficult to balance.

1st - Limited to 5 planets for your core race/the way the vats are handled
2nd - 100 pop limit. This doesn't bother me quite as much as the world limit, but it feels really arbitrary.

So first of all Part of what annoys me about how the vats are handled is that lore wise they can't be reproduced. Yet we can apparently deconstruct and rebuild them off-world/etc. I'll just assume we already deconstructed/put in storage 3 at the start of the game in preparation for expansion. It isn't that much of a stretch to think of them as able to be transported, but I think it takes away what could be an interesting element to the Clone Army origin. Namely that their home world is absolutely critical for them to keep a hold of or else they basically go extinct. True this shouldn't normally be an issue gameplay wise, but I like it RP wise. Plus gives you an interesting way to fight back against them. Get their homeworld and destroy the vats and you have effectively won.

Imho. The Clone Vat Complex should be either a singular building or planetary feature located on your homeworld and unable to be moved(at least at the start, one of the origin options could be to learn to move or otherwise break up the complex). Second rather than the vats providing pop maintenance start them with Genetic Healthcare and the ability to build Gene Clinics. Have the Medical Workers provide support for X number of pops each and deterioration doesn't kick in until you exceed that. Note that these clinics don't let you assemble pops, only maintain them. What this does is let you build on more than 5 worlds, but you can only assemble on your homeworld where the ancient vats that you barely understand the function of exist. More than likely the Medical Workers are using some of the material the Vats use to produce pops to maintain pops, so the more pops you have empire wide the slower the vats produce. Probably also be a good idea to have the planetary building series grant a medical worker job so that you aren't deteriorating immediately.

This would eventually hit the hard cap of 100 where all the materials needed for cloning are instead being used to maintain the current existing clones. At which point the origin could potentially have an additional event where you seek out additional materials to provide for the vats. The conclusion of this could unlock a building only capable of being built on the world with the Cloning Vats that increases the maximum supported pops, but continuously uses up a lot of resources(food or energy?) and a rare resource like Living Metal or something(I would say Nanites, but unless deposits are enabled to appear rarely outside the L-Cluster bodies I don't really see that happening due to being behind 2 separate DLC's. Though I suppose the origin quest could unlock a couple deposits in your home system. Distant Stars owners would have a higher potential cap of these buildings, but non-Distant Stars owners would be locked out of using the building). Basically you figured out how to produce the needed materials, but your unfamilarity with the tech makes you far less efficient at it than the ancient vat is. Anyways so if you fully dedicate your homeworld to only producing Vat material you could push well above the 100 limit. But more than likely you would only build a couple of the supporting buildings due to limited building slots/resource requirements.

I feel like that would fit better lorewise, but I am biased against hard caps and prefer softer caps in general.


As for balancing the ascended traits? Require more Medical Workers. Ascended Clones are vastly superior but also need constant genetic monitoring to make sure nothing becomes unstable. Basically requiring pops working as Medical Workers would help offset the incredible bonus. I would probably also create a third option to the origin which would be to stabilize the cloning process removing the negative to lifespan and reducing how many Medical Workers are needed to maintain pops and thus also reducing how much of the ancient vats resources are needed per pop increasing the pop limit. So your three choices would be abandoning the vats and your dependency on them. Stabilizing your genetic structure, but retain the dependency on the vats for reproduction. Or leaning full in to the advanced clone genetics even if it comes with more difficult medical care for your people.


All that still wouldn't address the admiral issue. Rather than nerf-batting the bonus it gives I would prefer to add a negative to the trait. Since they are designed to be expendable maybe that influences how they fight in space. Making them unwilling to withdraw from battle. They are after all expendable, they should go down taking as many with them as they can. So have it also greatly reduce their disengagement chance and maybe their evasion a bit as well. They are all in on offense and worry not the least about their own survival.


Anyways those are my way too long thoughts on the Origin.