Upgrading to droids and synths as an action, not automatic

[Calvax]

At the moment as soon as you research a higher tier of robot tech all the robots in your empire upgrade. That’s not much of a problem when it’s droids, but it’s weird with synths since they’re now sentient.

If you want to run an empire with lots of robots doing the work, but without it being a synth slave state, your option is to not pick the research. This is a bit clunky and means you have to avoid using auto research, even in the very late game.

What if instead, upon researching a new tech you got an event window asking if you want to install the updates immediately or wait until later? I’d you click “immediate” then it’s the same as it is now, all robots upgrade to the next tier. If you choose to wait they don’t and you get a special project to upgrade that you can perform at any time.

 

[ezno]

Agree, but materialist should get a faction approval malus if they don't do the last update

 

[Calvax]

I didn’t think too much on the ethics angle, but now that you mention it this could be a buff to spiritualists too. If machines didn’t auto upgrade then spiritualists could perhaps use robots no problem, have a small malus to droids, and a massive malus to synths.

 

[GOLANX]

I feel like robot, droid and Synth should be separate Traits, you can mod their species up and down as you want, use lower ones as workers and higher ones as specialist.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

I feel like robot, droid and Synth should be separate Traits, you can mod their species up and down as you want, use lower ones as workers and higher ones as specialist.

I think it would make sense to work like the synthetic ascension path - completing the research gives you an upgrade everyone option, and otherwise you have an assimilation-style upgrade/downgrade species rights option. That lets downgrading synths inflict happiness penalties as you rip out their brains, and might make treating robots/droids/synths from different empires as the same species easier to implement. Also lets the game prevent you from downgrading your main species synths after synthetic evolution, since it's handled by species rights instead of templates.

 

[Pancakelord]

I feel like robot, droid and Synth should be separate Traits, you can mod their species up and down as you want, use lower ones as workers and higher ones as specialist.

You mean be separate traits, again, right? Per the 1.9x wiki on traits:

They were once split in to 3, I assume this was cut for streamlining. The +20% synth output has worked it's way in to the synth tech and ascension AP since then, I believe.

Right now droid and synth states just unlock the ability to do some specialist jobs, and then all jobs, respectively. And AI slavery, automatically reduces all robots to effectively be droids in capability, at most, I think.

I'd like to see the inherent "mechanical trait" get a dynamic image and name that changes with the state of that robot pop 'Mechanical - Robot / Droid / Synthetic', for extra readability.

I'm not sure it's worth modelling upgrading robot > droid (as a droid is just a better robot - it's still not supposed to be sapient).

But, I do think that there should be a bigger 'process' for converting to synths (from droids or bio pops), beyond the dull special project the game currently uses - like it happening at a base rate of X pops per month (1?) And is sped up by having Robo assembly sites, using planetary decisions/edicts or some story/random popups.

This could open up the option for rebellion by spiritualist pops, too, for example. It's always felt weird to me that they just accept mind uploading.