Stellaris Dev Diary #270 - Traditional Results (of Summer Experiments)

[Troyen]

What do you mean by that? Psionically ascended empire is already connected via telepathy, they are just step away for total mind meld, and by some definitions they are already gestalt consciousness. So thy are (at the very least) linked since they got full psionic potential.

edit. What are you disagree with? That psionic empire is linked? its fact, not opinion xD just like cyber pops are linked. It deoes not means they are thinking eachother like gestalt consciousness, but like we with internet. Its just a fact.
Tho, in some headcanons, psy empire is already gestalt.

As in, some of the shroud events discuss you venturing in with individuals which is not something hive mind events have. Hives have altered event text referring more to the collective, which means all the shroud stuff (and any other psionic events) needs new text for hive minds. E.g. I don't think the text and content behind the Chosen One would make sense for a hive as it is currently.

From the other dev comments where they've explained this in the past, those updates wouldn't be hard, just more time-consuming than they had budget for.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Back from lunch today, time to answer some more questions!

Will we get more trait *points* to utilize the new cybernetic traits? Are we meant to get extra points through the provided negatives?

The current intention is that the negative cybernetic traits should provide points to get the positive traits, but as always not final numbers are not final and things can change due to feedback during the open beta.

Will bonuses to robot build speed effect the building of cyborgs? (What is this meant to be in flavor, anyways?)

No, this shifts roboticists to providing organic pop assembly. Flavour-wise, this is diverting the production lines from building robots to manufacturing cybernetic implants for your population.

Any plans for allowing Overlords to export their ascension to their subjects? I could see this being done on a light scale through holdings. Say, a building that converts a couple of pops a year in exchange for energy or the like. (This would also make for a fun branch office building. Exporting transcendence and such.)

No current plans, but this sounds like a great suggestion for a future Custodian update.

Can biologically ascended empires apply cybernetic templates to pops?

No.

Will other traditions will be buffed then?

To quote the 3.6 patch notes

• Rebalanced Harmony, Prosperity, Mercantile, Versatility and Adaptability traditions.

Can hiveminds now get Roboticists when they take cybernetics?

Nope!

Is taking a covenant the intended playstyle for Psionic?

Yes, we are looking at rebalancing the bonuses and penalties for the various covenants but I can't say anything more at this time.

Wait, some of the effects here are different, are some of these being changed for robotic species too?

Nope, the cybernetic traits were inspired by robot/machine traits, but have been changed.

Also, I feel that the pop assembly nerf for synthetic is a bit too much. Should be fine with 3 assembly job, especially with the boost for organic assembly.

Spoiler

Seems like the time-gap between latent psionics and fully psionic is quite short now, perhaps those could be spaced out a bit?

Yeah, that's something we're discussing.

It seems the Synthetic path can now be completed without even researching Synthetics

A requirement of the Synthetic Age tradition is to have researched the Synthetics technology.

Will we still be able to get Synthetics without taking the ascension path?

Currently, you can research the Synthetics tech, but robotic leaders is locked behind the tradition. I'll pay attention to feedback if this should be changed or not.

Are cybernetic ascension and synthetic ascension going to be mutually exclusive like all other ascensions?

All four ascension paths are mutually exclusive.

The finisher for Psionics allows us to form a Covenant with a random Shroud Entity. Is that simply opening the roll for the Shroud or does it immediately start an event with one? Also, if we decline, do we get the ability to roll for a different one (I think at some point that wasn't possible, but I can't remember).

Currently, it is a random roll for which shroud entity contacts you weighted by your ethics and other choices (as it currently is in 3.5). You'll have the option to decline of course and that means you can randomly stumble across potential covenants when exploring the Shroud (as in 3.5).

The Synthetic opening on the tradition tree flowchart says: "Can require robotic leaders", but in the actual dev diary it says:

A typo no-one noticed even through I had many proof-readers. It should "Can acquire robotic leaders".

I'm surprised there isn't a cyborg trait equivalent for Domestic Protocols or Propoganda Machines. Is there any particular reason those ones weren't added? Or were those too machine-y of traits for cyborgs?

They felt too robotic for cyborgs.

On transgenesis, it says we can add Lithoid and Plantoid traits to their respective non-archetypes. I assume that certain overlapping traits such as budding/crystallization and delicious/felsic count as the "same" trait and you can't have both, is that correct? Also, Polymelic doesn't mention being mutually exclusive with budding so both of those can be combined, I'm assuming? Also, as a slight aside, I'm not sure if this is intentional game design but Budding is compatible with the Fertile advanced trait despite not being compatible with Rapid Breeders, but I assume Polymelic will be also be compatible with those 2 as well?

Budding and Delicious can't be applied to lithoids, as they are not made of meat. Likewise, Felsic and Crystallization can only be applied to lithoids due to the aforementioned lack of meat.

Polymelic should be mutually exclusive with both Budding and Crystallization.

What's the requirement for the DNA-harvesting project for leviathans? Do you need to already have transgenics, or be on the genetic AP, or is this something normal empires can harvest "just in case"?

In order to harvest DNA from a Leviathan, you need to have researched Gene Tailoring and not have begun undertaking one of the other ascension paths.

For clarity, can this stack with Thrifty, for +50% TV from jobs?

Yes.

Looking at my recent cybernetics only save, I see that the Cyborg trait doesn't even do anything for rulers, and yet still takes up one of the three potential trait slots that leaders get. Cybernetic leaders have less room for diversification without a real upside when compared to synths.

Spoiler: Leader Trait Rebalance

New modifiers that depend upon @Eladrin's DD next week have been redacted.

 

[jayparadoritox]

Couple thoughts, I'd like to see some bonuses to spying it would be very thematic for cyborgs to be able to hack things easier.

They should probably just add a +Codebreaking modifier when it comes to hacking (or "hacking") a target who shares your ascension type. Robots should be great at hacking other robots (and regular empires to a lesser degree?). But not versus psychics. Psychics should get a +codebreaking buff when it comes to other psychics.

Bio maybe should get a small bonus to hacking other biological life-forms who share your "species pack", and then small bonuses with other biological groups (like lithoids, hiveminds, aquatics etc) when they reach Transgenetics at the end of their tree.

 

[squishking]

No, this shifts roboticists to providing organic pop assembly. Flavour-wise, this is diverting the production lines from building robots to manufacturing cybernetic implants for your population.

so cyborgs count as bio pops for effects? meaning things like budding work with them, or are they a third type of pop?

 

[Calvax]

Currently, it is a random roll for which shroud entity contacts you weighted by your ethics and other choices (as it currently is in 3.5). You'll have the option to decline of course and that means you can randomly stumble across potential covenants when exploring the Shroud (as in 3.5).

Thanks for your answers Could you perhaps explain the thinking behind keeping it RNG, as opposed to having it be a choice?

 

[great lakes]

Redoing how gene and robo modding work was out of the scope of things @Alfray Stryke could do as part of Summer Experimentation, but it's on the "todo" list. (Though without a firm target as to "when".)

It could be a lot better.

One of the nice things about the release cadence given to us by the Custodian Initiative is that we always have the opportunity to make things better, it just needs to be prioritized appropriately.

that's fair. glad to hear you concur on this in principle.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Thanks for your answers Could you perhaps explain the thinking behind keeping it RNG, as opposed to having it be a choice?

The Shroud is supposed to mysterious and even those that have attained Psionic ascension and learnt from the Shroudwalkers do not fully understand it.

 

[Lorenerd11]

Currently, you can research the Synthetics tech, but robotic leaders is locked behind the tradition.

I don't like this.

Maybe you could make it so that the Synthetic leader trait is only added to the leaders if you take the ascension, but we should definitely be allowed to hire Synthethic leaders otherwise once we research that option, just as we can now.

Flavor-wise, we should have the option to make Synthethics equal citizens in our empire, including as leaders, without necessarily becoming Synthethics ourselves.

 

[Calvax]

The Shroud is supposed to mysterious and even those that have attained Psionic ascension and learnt from the Shroudwalkers do not fully understand it.

I appreciate the flavour reason, but I still think it isn't fun to have to re-roll covenants until you get the one that matches your empire. No more than it would be fun for a genetic ascension empire to have RNG on what genetic traits they unlock. Being able to pick the covenant we want at the end of the finisher would still leave the regular shroud interactions as mysterious.

 

[grisamentum]

Didn't read all ten pages of this thread, but did anyone ask about Psionic for Hive Minds yet? Still feels very bad to be pigeonholed into a single ascension.

 

[Mcgan]

• The +5%/+10% Energy from jobs provided by the Latent Psionic and Psionic traits have been replaced with +5%/+10% Unity from jobs as this was more in-line with the desired focus for Psionic and particularly Spiritualist empires.

I recently saw a video on Youtube of a much older build of Stellaris (before Trade Value was created), and saw that the Thrifty trait already existed back then.
It increased Energy output from jobs instead:

I'm guessing the idea behind Psionics was that they could read people's thoughts and strike deals more easily thanks to that? But since Trade Value wasn't a thing, they made the Psionic traits boost energy output instead. And when Trade Value was created, everyone forgot somehow? (I don't know, I wasn't playing the game around that time).

Another thing that makes me believe that is how there often seem to be some connection between spiritualism and trade in this game. The 2 most obvious signs being the "Gospel of the Masses" civic and the "Numistic Shrine" building which gives Merchant and Priest jobs.

But replacing that with unity does make sense too, I agree. This would also avoid making Psionics feel "necessary" for a trade build.


Loving the ideas exposed there in general, can't wait for the open beta!

 

[T5_k]

Didn't read all ten pages of this thread, but did anyone ask about Psionic for Hive Minds yet? Still feels very bad to be pigeonholed into a single ascension.

Hiveminds can now choose between genetic and cybernetic, though I do agree hiveminds should get access to psionic as well - they are inherently telepathic after all. I do understand it would take a while to implement, as many events and especially shroud interactions would need to get heavily modified texts or even complete reworks for hive mind interactions.

 

[Critical Ethics]

The Shroud is supposed to mysterious and even those that have attained Psionic ascension and learnt from the Shroudwalkers do not fully understand it.

I've taken the shroud three times. Every time I did I got bad rolls until I decided to stop throwing good money after bad and finished the game down an ascension.

"But what are the odds of that?" - Well, work out the odds and multiply by the number of players and that's how many people are in the same boat as me. My play experience is that the shroud is something you throw energy at for the privilege of getting kicked in the buds every few years.

I'm fine with the shroud being nondeterministic and risky but IMO the current series of independent rolls that return either a good thing or a bad thing is an overly simplistic way of implementing it, and has not resulted in gameplay I'm interested in repeating.

 

[Wendigo514]

I've taken the shroud three times. Every time I did I got bad rolls until I decided to stop throwing good money after bad and finished the game down an ascension.

"But what are the odds of that?" - Well, work out the odds and multiply by the number of players and that's how many people are in the same boat as me. My lived experience is that the shroud is something you throw energy at for the privilege of getting kicked in the buds every few years.

I'm fine with the shroud being nondeterministic and risky but the current series of independent rolls that return either a good thing or a bad thing is an overly simplistic way of implementing it.

An improvement to make it less frustrating imo could be having the option to find the Shroud technologies without interacting with it, through the usual Tech Tree, and the associated event granting them for free instead. Once I arrived into the end game and beat the Crisis without ever getting the Psionic Shields, getting the Corrupted Avatar every time instead, quite annoying.

 

[Kranek]

I'm loving the changes in this Dev Diary but I have one question, I'm not sure if this was asked before:
Will regular empires be able to asimilate machine inteligence pops into normal robots? We get the option to assimilite hive minded pops into regular ones and vice versa so I feel like being able to disconnect a robot from machine intelligence would be easier than disconnecting a drone from a hive mind (in theory at least).

 

[Ryuplaneswalker]

As someone who has found enjoyment in playing with Tech on 5X costs, is there any way that we will be able to get Tradition costs separated from Tech Costs? If my Ascension paths are going to need Traditions to get the most out of the perks I would like the ability to tune the costs to be a bit less insane by endgame.

 

[Critical Ethics]

An improvement to make it less frustrating imo could be having the option to find the Shroud technologies without interacting with it, through the usual Tech Tree, and the associated event granting them for free instead. Once I arrived into the end game and beat the Crisis without ever getting the Psionic Shields, getting the Corrupted Avatar every time instead, quite annoying.

Oh I don't want Psionic Ascension to be shroud-optional. Quite the opposite. There's loads of ways to make the shroud something I'd enjoy interacting with while keeping it weird and scary and unpredictable. Like if bad outcomes accelerated how quickly you attracted a patron, with appropriate flavour text popups so you had an in-game way of at least vaguely knowing your excessive bad luck was leading somewhere. Or have each dive bring back a good and a bad result at the same time. Or if instead of paying to dive into the shroud you pay to visualise psychic fleets or whatever into existence and then a shroud event happens on top of that. Or just boost the base bonuses from being psychic and have the shroud dive be a forced non-optional annual event that just happens to you automatically because that's the price of being psychic!

That's why I didn't post any suggestions earlier. There's so many mutually exclusive ways to do it that I would enjoy much more that I felt putting any in my original post would muddy the issue. I just wanted to pass on that if I'm playing a save I'm otherwise enjoying and then being given the option to pay resources to opt into flipping a coin that, from my experience, just makes everything a bit worse over and over and over, that's not a choice I'm ever going to make again. Even going outside my experience into how I "know" it works, knowing nothing is stopping it from continuing to roll the bad results forever and ever isn't going to change that. I'll just spend that energy on reliquaries. At least they're literal gambling!

 

[Turnil]

Spoiler: Leader Trait Rebalance

New modifiers that depend upon @Eladrin's DD next week have been redacted.

So Machine empires will get a maximum assembly speed of 31,8. 16,5 without the relic or being the emperor.

6 for capital building, 1 empire type, 1 ruler bonus Synthetic, 3 assembly plant and 1 for machine worlds = 12, 10 when not the emperor or 8 on a new world
assembly speed bonus 20% tech, 10% tradition, 15% trait, 20% civic and 100% relic = 165%

I wonder if people will complain that ME are too strong or too weak. It's always one or the other.

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

I've taken the shroud three times. Every time I did I got bad rolls until I decided to stop throwing good money after bad and finished the game down an ascension.

"But what are the odds of that?" - Well, work out the odds and multiply by the number of players and that's how many people are in the same boat as me. My play experience is that the shroud is something you throw energy at for the privilege of getting kicked in the buds every few years.

I'm fine with the shroud being nondeterministic and risky but IMO the current series of independent rolls that return either a good thing or a bad thing is an overly simplistic way of implementing it, and has not resulted in gameplay I'm interested in repeating.

Completely disagree. The chaotic and dangerous nature of the Shroud is the primary appeal of Psionic ascension. Making everything "meta" is the absolute worst idea for this game. This is NOT a competitive game, it's a storytelling game where bad things happening out of your control is part of the fun. If I wanted Starcraft or Civilization I'd play those games.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

Personally I agree that any robo/gene modding projects should use the new Incident system, with the speed determined by how much (and what type) of resource you are willing to spend. Plus you can use pulse events or the different stages to have interesting things happen (extra unrest from an unwilling populace, unexpected popularity speeding up the process, defective parts being used costing more time/resources, etc)

I am against this, because I can't imagine gene-modding in a multicultural late game empire spawning a dozen situations to be any kind of fun.