Best game I've had was when the Unbidden spawned on top of my homeworld, while I was fighting (and kinda losing) a FE.
Speculation: the other 2/3 of the future
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Best game I've had was when the Unbidden spawned on top of my homeworld, while I was fighting (and kinda losing) a FE.
BlackUmbrella thinks it's terribly boring, but I agree. Opening the equivalent of what is the Unbidden (or Prythorians) on top of your capital is a bigger threat than just a regular old doomstack. You'll be trying to reclaim your position for a long time, if not get wiped out entirely. Way more entertaining threat than he leads on.
Which in turn together with many other arguments led to the theory, that noone in the three movies ever left the matrix. They were all in it just on different planes of the same simulation. Even Zion was just part of the Simulation.
Stop, from what I gather, Synthetic life interfaces well with materialists and Psionic life with Spiritualist. Things biological perfection... Which Ethos does that one work well with?
I'm not saying fighting doomstacks can't be fun- I've had an interesting war or two against the Unbidden myself (although I feel they need rebalancing, personally- the ludicrous strength of Crisis fleets is part of what forces people into the "infinite expansion" model as the only viable one), I just think there can be more interesting ways of placing consequences or challenges on the player. It would be an utter shame to rely solely on battles to punish the player for incaution or challenge them after rewards are handed out.
Combat and warfare is not terribly engaging in Stellaris, but takes up a disproportionate amount of gameplay.
As somebody who utterly loves the Horizon Signal event chains, I see that as an example of what the game can pull off for beneficial effects and want to see that same creativity and breadth of mechanics used for negative ones. That ultimately denying the Worm results in just one more fight against a silly-strong enemy that zaps your doomstack is, honestly, a waste of potential.
Just so you all know: the livestream showed that [psychic] trancendence turned all of your primary species pops into psychics that give +5% to all sciences +5% energy and +5% happiness (not final numbers). Not comparable to being synths, but still significant and a new bonus to work with. Add to that all leaders get bonuses as well depending on what kind of leader they are, even though they're not immortal, while being a synth leader doesn't give you any perks other than being immortal, as far as I know. I'm sure Paradox is working through balancing plenty these days
Lots of cool ideas for machine empires here, but I'm not seeing much love for the genetic engineering branch. Are they not as popular as the other two? I think we're all going off of the assumption that all three will have comparable levels of content to play with. Personally I'm envisioning playing a game as xenophobe militarist bugs that go full genetic engineering and every planet they conquer they go straight to processing the conquered pops. Devour all life to feed your growing swarm, more bio-fuel for genetic mutation
I don't mean to keep harping about the livestock and processing part, the reason I brought it up at all was to suggest a gameplay reason to keep the mechanic viable in the game for people who want to go full synth and have no need for food anymore. Kinda a waste to toss out a whole game mechanic that way, but I guess that's how the game plays based on your playstyle. Not like you can eat alien species as xenophiles, or get psychics at all as materialists
Lots of cool ideas for machine empires here, but I'm not seeing much love for the genetic engineering branch. Are they not as popular as the other two? I think we're all going off of the assumption that all three will have comparable levels of content to play with. Personally I'm envisioning playing a game as xenophobe militarist bugs that go full genetic engineering and every planet they conquer they go straight to processing the conquered pops. Devour all life to feed your growing swarm, more bio-fuel for genetic mutation
I don't mean to keep harping about the livestock and processing part, the reason I brought it up at all was to suggest a gameplay reason to keep the mechanic viable in the game for people who want to go full synth and have no need for food anymore. Kinda a waste to toss out a whole game mechanic that way, but I guess that's how the game plays based on your playstyle. Not like you can eat alien species as xenophiles, or get psychics at all as materialists
Ok, time to brainstorm ideas for the much neglected biological evolutionary path:
- Creating a supra-organic organism / parasite that unites all your species consciousness
- You know what is the epithome of "genetic technology going awry", right? Space zombi outbreak. Bring it on!
- Being able to communicate with the planets as if they were intelligences (gaia theories)
- Creating a paradise on Earth. Then discovering why Alien's observers went extinct
- Becoming a single, monstruous organism. Think Akira's ending, or even better, "I am a Hero"
- Creating a supra-organic organism / parasite that unites all your species consciousness
- You know what is the epithome of "genetic technology going awry", right? Space zombi outbreak. Bring it on!
- Being able to communicate with the planets as if they were intelligences (gaia theories)
- Creating a paradise on Earth. Then discovering why Alien's observers went extinct
- Becoming a single, monstruous organism. Think Akira's ending, or even better, "I am a Hero"
There should be a militarist ascension path where you build a giant skull throne for your leader to sit on. Each empire you conquer adds another skull to the throne. The second level ascension adds skulls to all your spaceships and replaces all your doorknobs with tiny skulls.
I am guessing it's where the gene mods are now. Hopefully they are cheaper because they are an ascension perk.
I hope the Synthetic path comes with some new robot pop models, having your new synthetic species looks identical to your neighbor's janitor droid would take some of the fun out of it.
- The XCOM Aliens/Man After Man path, genetically altering your pops to perfectly serve the tasks given to them until most if not all of the pops of your Empire no longer resemble their base species.
- The XCOM Aliens/Man After Man path, genetically altering your pops to perfectly serve the tasks given to them until most if not all of the pops of your Empire no longer resemble their base species.
You can't really call it "neglected" when we haven't been told ANYTHING about it.
Neglected not by developers, but the community, as in there seem to be little hype for them. Which is a pity, because there are many cool things that might await us!
I've been thinking: one of the key interesting parts of the Shroud for psionics is that they're not all good things, and some of them are short term rewards for long term peril. How do we think this might play out with genetic engineering or machine empires? Some of the ideas for the former I've heard are that you could get genetic mutants or a zombie plague, both cool ideas. Maybe machine empire might get a computer virus or have pops revolt to being forcibly implanted with cybernetics using their new unrest mechanic?
There's no hype because any speculation is baseless at this stage. Might as well try to build hype for speculation of the Hypothetically Upcoming MLP DLC.
Based on what I saw already, the genetic path will give you a ton of Trait points and massive reduction to the GE cost/pop.
I think the costs were increased to thier current - rather extreme - level in preparation for that.
As such it would give you the most Freedom to choose your direction and you could even choose if is pop or leader focussed.
Psionics seems to be clearly leader Focussed.
Robot Upload empire would propably be Pop focussed. Switching from food to power. Adding all the bonuses for being an AI. It would at least have immortal leaders too, but propably with less bonus for the leaders. In effect you get "absolutely save AI bonuses".
I asume at least adding the "Mechanical" trait to your pops. On top of the already existing traits. Could put you somewhere in the +40% for anything but food.
Immortal for Leaders has been confirmed already.
I am not so sure that would be a viable option. Afaik Habitats and the Ascension chain all need the 2nd and 4th AP-Slot. You could in theory save the points (it is the 2nd slot open, not the 1st one in use). But that would mean not using a lot of the other options.
It would be viable if you are a tall Robot ascension empire. But for something (propably) highly pop focussed, you want to go wide to reap the most benefits.
I don't know what creating supersoldiers have to do specifically with a xenophobic empire, and rather with a militarist empire. Anyways, genetic manipulating can be used for much more stuff.
Most other cases. It would be sort of weird if one ethic and not its counterpart had an ascension path, and if you don't have any of the three ethics... I bet the genetic path is the generic path, allowing you to pick a path even if you lack spiritualist or materialist. You could always of course pick neither since they apparently needs to be properly focused on, but always having an option helps.
I wonder if there will ever be any more paths in the future. I personally doubt it since ascension perks are an expansion-feature, and I can't think of any new, additional ones.
Hard to say since we don't know what they all are yet. It is always possible a future dlc will change this.
From my experience DLC generally doesn't depend on another DLC, though patches sometimes have, so I guess that is an option.