Why Bio Ascension is Now the Best Path

[Wolfgang I]

As a hive mind, I ran bio ascension, then conquered the Spiritualist FE.

Got plenty of psionic leaders that way (if I wanted them).

That was my standard approach before they introduced kettlings and rackets.
For a few versions it was possible to get access to the shroud if a federation member or a vassal ascended.

 

[01d55]

I find that the highest price of synth ascension is not pop growth - the extra assembly jobs you get from planet capitol buildings once you ascend take care of that - but pop migration.

Synths do not emigrate from overpopulated worlds of their own volition, and allowing resettlement will displease individualist factions (iirc some xenophile factions also want free migration). This shuts down mid-late boost to new colonies that organic migration provides, and threatens to undermine your older colonies with overcrowding and unemployment unless you manually suppress assembly jobs, or have a faction setup that permits manually exporting excess pops.

Having to spend engineering research for the special projects is the second highest price. There are so many techs in engineering!

 

[buglepong]

Well it certainly came up at least to par with the other paths in 2.2.
Its definitely the "easiest" path to use with all of 2.2's bugs, and not being able to assign jobs individually. Its just easier to blanket mod entire planets in a specialised way.