Stellaris Dev Diary #273 - A Peek into the Future

[Nazarius40000]

The thing that I think the devs are working with but haven't nailed yet is that psionics has two major downsides attached to the upsides. First, no pop assembly (which is associated with the baseline psionics buffs) and second covenant downsides (which, naturally, are tied to covenant upsides). There's also random shroud boon/maluses but while sometimes I've gotten a military buff at peace or debuff at war broadly I don't think those are actually a big deal either way. They feel fair, not like an advantage or disadvantage, including the special ship components (assuming you get them and have zro and have the ability to harvest it).


Pop assembly is far and away stronger than the baseline psionics buffs. It really was before the beta too, but since the other ascensions got MORE pop assembly and the baseline psionics buffs still disappear relative to tech buffs (since they're additive) by midgame, it's an even greater disparity. 20% more resources is additive, 20% more pops is multiplicative (and you'll have an advantage in pops much higher than 20%). You can conquer to get more pops, but the other ascensions can too (arguably better, because they can modify their pops to be the way they want and psionics cannot). So that's a loss for psionics.

Now, what about covenants? I've thought about this for a while, the best analog the others have to covenants is gene modding/robomodding. The benefits from covenants are actually, broadly... Lower than pop modding. I don't mean considering the permanent or random downsides, I mean just the upside is worse than pop modding or roughly the same depending on covenant, both with 3.6 and before. And it still has downsides!

Seriously, compare any one covenant (because you can only have one) to a species customized with biological or synthetic ascension for that same purpose - the only ones where psionics has a relative advantage you'll notice are ironically the Eater and Whisperers. The Eater bonuses are gone inside of three repeatables (or just otherwise having better tech, achievable easily with other ascensions due to the mentioned job output|pop assembly disparity) and it has huge downsides. The Whisperer has relatively better upsides because they don't disappear from tech, but they're also broadly irrelevant - espionage isn't very good right now, and influence is incredibly abundant by simply maintaining a halfway competent fleet. And that one has extremely bad downsides too!

I'm not gonna get mad at the devs over this like some people have, psionics is genuinely hard to balance because it works in a completely different way than the other ascensions do. But they need to figure out "what is psionics better at/worse at/completely different at" compared to the other ascensions and make sure they basically balance the columns, as it were. It's much more interesting in 3.6 than before, but it's still not very good.

I sat and thought and came to the conclusion that psionics need to add their racial characteristics to strengthen them. Because the author of this post is right. What is the point of a 20% increase in production from the psi corps on the planet, when a conditional synthetic or biologist will simply have 20-30 more settlements?

Psionics really work in a different way, since synthetics, biology (well, with the new patch - cybernetics) receive a collection of settlements, which in fact gives a double increase in settlements. At this time, the biologist receives strong buffs from the signs "fertile" and "robust" as an example. Synthetics get immortality, strong buffs and the opportunity to colonize all the planets without wasting time and money on terrorization. And cybernetics can combine organic and robotic features, and also get the assembly of settlements.

I think that psionics need to be given their own characteristics and modding races that can compete with synthetics, biologists and cybernetics.

 

[-Marauder-]

Also, something people forget that is a huge nerf to Psionics, and a buff to both Bio and Synth. The change to Ecus. The 50% growth bonus was huge for Psionic Empires. Now it's a 25/25. Psionics will likely not benefit from the latter. And some people even reported it's only 15/15 currently in the beta.

 

[PAnZuRiEL]

The Integrated Preservation tradition for Machine Intelligences now affects Evaluators (and Chronicle Drones) not Coordinators.

So that means the bonus is usually capped at -12 deviancy per planet? I think that's a pretty questionable choice. Rather than nerfing all machine intelligences, we just needed a tradition swap for rogue servitors that don't have access to coordinators.

 

[Dr Pippy]

So that means the bonus is usually capped at -12 deviancy per planet? I think that's a pretty questionable choice. Rather than nerfing all machine intelligences, we just needed a tradition swap for rogue servitors that don't have access to coordinators.

I was also concerned about this, but they said that they were going to increase the deviancy reduction per evaluator. Hopefully it ends up being roughly equal in the end.

 

[TrotBot]

without wasting time and money on terrorization

Terraforming? I think the terrorization bit depends on ethics, not ascension path.

 

[Nazarius40000]

Terraforming? I think the terrorization bit depends on ethics, not ascension path.

Google translator moment

 

[gabsparadox]

"Livng reactive armor" instead of "living"
....
literally unplayable!

Oh no, my tendencies to typos has been discovered