Synthetic Rebellions exist to Punish Spiritualist

[Me_]

The synthetic rebellion doesn't make much sense as designed. I literally never saw it happen. It's trivially easy to avoid by either choosing the right option or simply not going for the techs that lead to it.

But the claim in the title is objectively wrong and the burden of proof is on the claimant.

I don't think I'd want to see it reworked though. I feel like its the kind of obligatory element that the game must have to satisfy certain group of players that would vocally demand it were it not in the game, but its also something that can never really be made into anything worthwhile.

 

[Oculument]

Prove me wrong.

Spiritualist is the only ethic that cannot give robot intelligence citizenship which effectively acts as an immunity to a synthetic rebellion.

Fanatic Purifier xenophobes that give rights to synths will start purging them. If an FP empire wants to have robots at all it must keep them enslaved and fight the inevitable rebellion.

 

[Blackadder23]

This is a noob trap, tbf.

Most "Are these machines alive?" mechanics and lore are tied to the Synthetics technology, which is marked as a dangerous tech for this reason. It's not as obvious that Sapient Combat Simulations can trigger the AI rebellion.

Unless something has changed in a recent patch (I haven't played for a month or so), the sapient computers tech is also marked "dangerous". If I were new to the game and saw that, I would certainly investigate the reason (and in fact did, when I was new to the game).

 

[GOLANX]

Good spiritualists don't have AI rebellions because good spiritualists don't have AI in the first place. You're confusing them for Xeophobes.

The fact that xenophobes can't do AI is dumb, it's like if Nazi Germany decided Tanks were abominations and put them in death camps, I'd love to know whose bright idea that was. Xenophobes should be proud of their accomplishments not building a robot and immediately calling it Xeno Scum. You built the finest robots from the best factories designed by the greatest scientists from the greatest people that ever existed, why are these bots Xeno Scum and not proof of their own superiority.

Having robots in general is a minor -5 penalty for spiritualists, the lowest faction opinion penalty possible. But not forbidding AI is itself a -10, and having Synths is a -20. At this point your faction dis-approval eclipses all gains you can have without going Psionic Ascension. If you are engaging with AI research as a Spiritualist, you are fundamentally not pursuing a Spiritualist ethic-based run strategy that would be using the strengths of the Spiritualist ethics faction (high ethics attraction and ease of making faction happy). You have no synergy reason to pursue Synthetics- it reduces your empire's happiness, stability, and influence.

Good, don't pursue these 2 valuable technologies, you are gimping yourself, and if you wanted to Gene Ascend your out of luck because your stuck with inferior computers. BTW you also can't turn on auto research ever because it will research the forbidden technologies. Through all of that though I'd be OK with it if literally one other ethic (not the bull with xenophobes) had the same kind of setup. If Materialist couldn't research Psionic Theory, Jump Drives, or Dark Matter without Starting a Psionic rebellion, Fine everybody has technologies that they can't develop without risk, it's fine that Spiritualist have issues with AI techs because they aren't being singled out.

But AI is a pre-requisite for a Synthetic rebellion. Ergo, to have the pre-requisite for an AI rebellion, you must already be not pursuing a Spiritualist build. You can not run into the problem unless you are playing anti-synergetically with the Spiritualist mechanics.

Again no other ethic logically has that restriction.

Synthetic Rebellions are far more of a mechanical punishment for Xenophobe empires, because having citizen-AI needed to avoid the rebellion is itself what degrades the ethics attraction of a Xenophobe empire. Xenophile- one of the strongest ethics attractions in the game- is based around having free non-slave alien species in your empire. Synths count. The only way to retain your Xenophobe ethical majority is to not have free Synths.

Which is still extra dumb because it bans xenophobes from using pop assembly entirely as they have just as many issues with genetic modification and cloning. Spiritualist can do gene Ascension no problem, they can even disable Synth Rebellions by just starting Synth Ascension.

This is where Synth Rebellions as a mechanical punishment actually punish a playstyle, because the Xenophobes who are trying to lean into the xenophobe faction will get burned for not giving full citizen rights.

Punishing a playstyle only makes sense if alternatives are equally available and other ethics can be punished for playing in not the right ways. Egalitarians aren't Punished for building precinct houses. Authoritarians aren't even rewarded for building precinct houses when enforcers should be the instrument for keeping your people in line, you can play Authoritarians just like Egalitarians without being punished.

If I'm supposed to play in specific ways to never cause a Synth rebellion then Synth Rebellions aren't adding anything interesting to the game might as well remove the Rebellions, allow players to play the way we want, and add cosmetics to Synthetic Dawn to compensate. Devs can always add Synth Rebellions back in with an internal politics DLC, because it would be an extention of a civil war system it would likely be much better.

 

[GOLANX]

Fanatic Purifier xenophobes that give rights to synths will start purging them. If an FP empire wants to have robots at all it must keep them enslaved and fight the inevitable rebellion.

Purifiers made the bots why they heck do they have a problem with it? Phobes should be proud of their technology, if they were afraid they should be banned mechanically from using them in the first place and adequate alternatives should also be available

 

[Cry_Havok]

Unless something has changed in a recent patch (I haven't played for a month or so), the sapient computers tech is also marked "dangerous". If I were new to the game and saw that, I would certainly investigate the reason (and in fact did, when I was new to the game).

Which wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact if you are doing war at all you will eventually end up with the tech from scanning debris

 

[Archael90]

Purifiers made the bots why they heck do they have a problem with it? Phobes should be proud of their technology, if they were afraid they should be banned mechanically from using them in the first place and adequate alternatives should also be available

They are against synths because they are sapient, and can think and think differently than founder species, this makes them xeno scum :v
but they still can enslave them, when policy is set to citizen rights, and they will not have rebelion.

 

[GOLANX]

They are against synths because they are sapient, and can think and think differently than founder species, this makes them xeno scum :v
but they still can enslave them, when policy is set to citizen rights, and they will not have rebelion.

What makes you think they think differently, Prikki-Ti are alive because they destroy anything that can hurt them, we serve in that capacity saving the Prikki from extinction at the hands of filthy Xenos. The Prikki made the bots in their own image they don't consider them a threat. if they did they wouldn't have been allowed to build them in the first place.

You can't make those assumptions without artificially ascribing values to them.

 

[InvisibleBison]

Which wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact if you are doing war at all you will eventually end up with the tech from scanning debris

How is that a concern? Just don't scan debris that would give you techs you don't want to have.

 

[Archael90]

What makes you think they think differently

If they would think the same way, then purrifers would be allowed to make free citizen synths.

 

[Cry_Havok]

How is that a concern? Just don't scan debris that would give you techs you don't want to have.

Not doing the thing that you're condition to do is not an answer. When is the last time you even checked what the enemy ships were going to give for research?

 

[Jamaican Castle]

Synthetic rebellions are really a punishment for forming a federation with 4-5 hapless AI that will each suffer a machine rebellion, usually one right after another.

Seriously. They were a neat flavor event once, but could they get some kind of flag to not happen to every AI, every game? <.<

 

[InvisibleBison]

Not doing the thing that you're condition to do is not an answer. When is the last time you even checked what the enemy ships were going to give for research?

Pretty much every time I research debris. Almost all of the debris that I scan is from FE ships, and when I issue orders to scan them I make sure that I don't scan debris that will complete the research of the Carrier Operations technology.

 

[MrParadux]

You can also just, you know, not research synths. Synths are only really worth researching if you're going for synthetic ascension. Otherwise their only" advantage" over droids is that they can take ruler jobs, which 99,99% of the time is utterly irrelevant.

You can also get the robot rebelion from researching sapient ship computers, but if you're a spiritualist you might as well go for psionic ascension and precognition computers. So you again solve the problem by just not researching the tech that triggers the rebellion.

Spiritualist ethic is still getting the shorter end of the stick compared to materialists, but robot rebellion does not factor in it.

Good points. It also makes dangerous technologies actually dangerous

 

[Nebbie Zebbie]

Looking at the AI Rebellion in particular is looking at a group of trees instead of the whole forest. The main problem with ascension path balance and as a result the massive Materialist over Spiritualist imbalance is that the Cloning technology just gives a boring pop growth bonus, while actually assembling organic pops via Clone Vats is gated behind Biological ascension, and you can get robots going ridiculously early.
Building robots doesn't lock you in to a path, so pretty much every empire should do it ASAP, and then choose what to do later. Spiritualist is hurt by this, with the robots pushing it away from its preferred ascension path and potentially causing issues. Meanwhile, Materialist might struggle to go Psionic, but its preferred ascension path is easy to just fall right into from those robots.
If Clone Vats were a fairly early thing not gated by a particular ascension path, Spiritualist could just do them and then either go full Biological or go into its preferred ascension of Psionics.

There are also imbalances between the ascension paths (Synthetic beats Biological because it has a +10% output modifier that makes it better at alloys and tech, Psionic is overly invested in war stuff that really loses its luster as the game goes on), but these tend to come in pretty late, and the ascension paths are almost balanced around the early midgame.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Spiritualists can do that, though. Allowing robots is -5% faction happiness - hardly relevant compared to the boost from robots.

It's actually -15% because you're missing the +10 for banning them, and spiritualism is pretty good at getting ethic attractiveness so it's going to be a pretty big faction, so you're choosing between missing out on the productivity of pop growth or the influence of a large faction being happier in the early game where you really want both.

And it's the only ethic that has to make that decision in the crucial stages of the game.

I still think the best way to fix it is to remove sources of double pop growth and make early robots into something that radically modifies jobs instead of granting the most powerful resource in the game for a negligible cost.

 

[Ryika]

It's actually -15% because you're missing the +10 for banning them, and spiritualism is pretty good at getting ethic attractiveness so it's going to be a pretty big faction, so you're choosing between missing out on the productivity of pop growth or the influence of a large faction being happier in the early game where you really want both.

There is no +10 for banning robots. See:

Factions - Stellaris Wiki

stellaris.paradoxwikis.com

There is a +10 for Materialists for not banning Robots, but nothing for Spiritualists for actually banning them.

I also checked the game files to make sure it's not the wiki missing information and didn't find anything, so I think you're misremembering.

And it's the only ethic that has to make that decision in the crucial stages of the game.

It's a decision with an obvious answer. If robots are beneficial for the strategy you're playing, you build them.

And it's not like those -5% exist in a vacuum either. You get +10% for just having a large population of Spiritualists, and +5% for having Spiritualism as your Governing Ethics, and you gain quite a lot of passive attraction, so that happy faction will be big. I could just as easily argue that "It's the only ethic that gets 15% faction happiness without doing anything!"

The simply reality is, all factions behave slightly differently, and they all have their benefits and downsides. Judging an entire faction by that one thing within its package makes no sense.

 

[Archael90]

"It's the only ethic that gets 15% faction happiness without doing anything!"

But something for something
Materialists can get 90%-105% faction aproval depending on temporary bonusses.
Spiritualists can get 80%-90% depending on their temporary bonusses, but in fact its 70-90 if you include rng, because +/-5% is from shroud rng, and remember that, one 5% require you to take ascension perk AND sacrifice one of your gaia worlds, so lets include this one, and you get 65%-90%. And as you can see, upper limit of spiritualis faction aproval is on pair with lowest aproval materialists can get from their faction.
This can be even lower 60 to 85 max aproval if you have robotic workers.

btw. Why spiritualists cant form research cooperative?
Why they cant be portrayed as wise and enlightened like in most ficion? So they could be an opposition to materialists in such way? Both pursuing knowlege, but one of them goes for internal development, while second goes for external development? This way both of them can make special federation. Both of them should build robots, yet one of them would love to became a synth, and second one would love to free the spark of consiousness from imperfect robotic synths.

 

[Ryika]

But something for something
Materialists can get 90%-105% faction aproval depending on temporary bonusses.
Spiritualists can get 80%-90% depending on their temporary bonusses, but in fact its 70-90 if you include rng, because +/-5% is from shroud rng, and remember that, one 5% require you to take ascension perk AND sacrifice one of your gaia worlds, so lets include this one, and you get 65%-90%. And as you can see, upper limit of spiritualis faction aproval is on pair with lowest aproval materialists can get from their faction.
This can be even lower 60 to 85 max aproval if you have robotic workers.

Sure, but I'm not arguing that the factions are equally strong. My only point was that a faction should not be judged on a single one of its effects.

More generally, I think the major, overarching issue with Spiritualists is that they just don't have anything they're really good at, aside from unlocking the shroud. They pretty much lack a niche they can play into, and as a result, they're just not at the forefront of any playstyle.

 

[Archael90]

aside from unlocking the shroud.

including unlocking the shroud. Only materialists have problem with that.