Stellaris - [v2.8.1] (dfce) Psionic/Telepathy traits don't apply to pops in colonizaiton ships. (Edit: Was wrong, it happens during colonization)

[Caladobolg]

Description: As in title, if you send out a colonization ship and acquire either the lesser or greater psionic ability in transit, the pops that are still on ships won't receive the trait. Happened to me in the last run with both lesser and geater psionic traits. This created 2 inferior sub-species of my main one, which I can't even get rid of since they count as 'main species', too.

DLC's: Utopia, Apocalypse, Megacorp, Federations.

Mods: None.

Reproduction Steps:
1. Send out a colonization ship just before acquiring a new trait for the species. I didn't check if clicking the button confirmation is enough to bug it out or if the ship needs to be in flight, but my bet is on the former, since it 'locks' the kind of species that's travelling to the new plant.

I don't know if this issue repeats with other things beside the lesser and greater psionic traits, but I'd guess it's the same for all events that apply a new trait to the entire race.

2. Acquire the lesser/greater psionic trait. The easiest way of reproduction is the greater one, since it's acquired through a click.

3. Wait for the ship to arrive and colonize the new planet, and cry over your new inferior subspecies.

 

[hart30]

U should be able to change their species rights ro "assimilation". This will upgrade all pops which were left out due to colonization.

 

[Caladobolg]

I played some more games and noticed the exact moment this bug occurs. It's when the colonization is ongoing on a planet - my original assumption about on-ship pops was either wrong or has been fixed.

Dunno if in-building-queue (as in being currently constructed in a shipyard) colony ships would experience the issue too or not.

As for assimialtion - that's not something you can do with psionic pops. I'm not a cyborg empire, which indeed can fix the same issue by setting the 'old main species' to 'assimilation' status.

PS - As I wrote originally, this bug occurs with ALL traits that are given to your species. For example the anomaly event with the box and three colours of fluids - this too doesn't get applied to the pops that are in the active process of colonizing a planet.

Considering that currently psionic path is underpowered anyway compared to synths, it's a bit sad that it has bugs you have to look out for. After all, you can't get rid of your main sub-speciec unless you deliberately lose a planet with them / let them get bombed to oblivon. It's sad.

 

[hart30]

But u really can use assimilation as species right for rhe psionic path. But it only works after u chose the final perk, which lets ur species go full psionic. The latent psionic trait can not be applied through this, like the cyborg trait can for the first cybernetic perk.
So if have not chosen both psionic perks, but only the first one yet, there is only the option to genemod. It usually takes 1-2 months until the pops it missed due to colonization are converted.

 

[Caladobolg]

... I don't think I saw that option in the old save where I had the full psionic either, but I will check again once I get to that point in the current game.

Still doesn't change the fact that it's a bug, no? I mean I get it's useful if you want to bug-out your original species and easily keep them when going full synthetic, but... Well. Dunno?

Thanks for the quick response~

 

[hart30]

I believe the main reason why u dont have the assimilation right for latent psionic lies in the past. When the trait was first introduced, it did not give any buffs to the pops and only to leaders. So assimilation at this stage was not necessary. Its a leftover from the past and needs correction, because as u said - pops under colonization dont get converted and also with migration treaty sometimes old pops move back into ur empire.

 

[Caladobolg]

I mean, even if there was an option to assimilate them, the colonization stuff is still a bug, no? Unless it's an intended mechanic to 'save' some of your pops just-in-case, then whatever ;p

 

[hart30]

I believe this is one of the bugs (like the invincible fleet one) that paradox either fails to fix or deems too complicated to fix. So it introduced ways for the player to fix the pops themselves (as complicated bugfixes only produce more bugs)

 

[crow_mw]

Small bump, as this issue still occurs in current (3.3) version of the game.

As discussed above, there are workarounds possible - savegame editing, console commands, migrate your pops to other spiritual empire, wait for stage and assimilate. It is also possible to find non-working solutions, again like mentioned in this thread - it is currently not possible to add Latent Psionic via genemod. From new player perspective, this is very confusing, as this is very in-your-face (what did I do wrong?), can only be addressed by very technical means and consumes a lot of googling time to find up-to-date answers.