Stellaris Dev Diary #275 - Bless Thy Soul

[Thiend]

I can only tell you that you have bad luck, then. I generally get psionic theory even before getting gene modding, unfortunately.

The math says that if you generally get synths first, you're either doing something wrong, or getting some crazy luck. Psionic theory has higher weight, comes a full tier earlier, and doesn't have strict prerequesites that must be researched first.

Rarity is not equal, it depends on what tier a tech is in. There are 25 tier 4 engineering technologies and 56 tier 3 society technologies. That means if you're getting tier 3 tech going for psionics, weight irrelevant there are 55 choices other than the one you want... Which means it's actually significantly harder to get than synthetics, because once you're researching tier 4 engineering you are rapidly removing options other than the one you want and it takes over twice as long to do that for psionics. Also, the generic specialist for psionics is much harder to get than the one for industrial technology (AKA synthetics) and having even just robots means your pop assembly is already happening while for psionics they get nothing until they actually have psionics.

"Higher tier lower weight" sounds harder. It isn't necessarily the case though.

It's also entirely possible, tiny sample size permitting, that they accidentally reversed the spiritualist modifier and being more spiritualist is currently making it harder instead of easier... We have you, getting it when you don't want it, and both of us trying extremely hard with enormous difficulty. Assuming none of us are having bizarre luck (and I've played 10+ games exclusively until psionics showed up so I could be sure my complaint was valid so... That's some preposterous bad luck if so) our results indicate something might be up.

 

[luxeritib]

Rarity is not equal, it depends on what tier a tech is in. There are 25 tier 4 engineering technologies and 56 tier 3 society technologies. That means if you're getting tier 3 tech going for psionics, wait irrelevant there are 55 choices other than the one you want... Which means it's actually significantly harder to get than synthetics, because once you're researching tier 4 engineering you are rapidly removing options other than the one you want and it takes over twice as long to do that for psionics. Also, the generic specialist for psionics is much harder to get than the one for industrial technology (AKA synthetics) and having even just robots means your pop assembly is already happening while for psionics they get nothing until they actually have psionics.

"Higher tier lower weight" sounds harder. It isn't necessarily the case though.

It's also entirely possible, tiny sample size permitting, that they accidentally reversed the spiritualist modifier and being more spiritualist is currently making it harder instead of easier... We have you, getting it when you don't want it, and both of us trying extremely hard with enormous difficulty. Assuming none of us are having bizarre luck (and I've played 10+ games exclusively until psionics showed up so I could be sure my complaint was valid so... That's some preposterous bad luck if so) our results indicate something might be up.

If you play as spiritualist, Synthetics weight is 10, and even if you have Industry expert it doesn't go higher, it stays at 10. If you don't have Industry expert/Spark of Genius/... that weight 10 becomes 2(=20x0.5x0.2).
And even though there are 56 tier 3 society techs, most of them require prerequisites, so you can avoid some of them.

And for latter, I personally don't think devs accidentally reversed weight modifier, because I've done a lot of Psionic rush builds run with fanatic spiritualist - here be dragon empire, and I was able to get psionic theory in time most of the time. I know Psionics is a rare tech and the weight is low, but comparing with Synths... I'd have to say it's just bad luck.

For 3.5.3 version, yeah you get synth ascension prerequisites(droids tech) before psionic theory most of the time, but in 3.6 beta, I think it's a different story.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Rarity is not equal, it depends on what tier a tech is in. There are 25 tier 4 engineering technologies and 56 tier 3 society technologies. That means if you're getting tier 3 tech going for psionics, wait irrelevant there are 55 choices other than the one you want... Which means it's actually significantly harder to get than synthetics, because once you're researching tier 4 engineering you are rapidly removing options other than the one you want and it takes over twice as long to do that for psionics. Also, the generic specialist for psionics is much harder to get than the one for industrial technology (AKA synthetics) and having even just robots means your pop assembly is already happening while for psionics they get nothing until they actually have psionics.

"Higher tier lower weight" sounds harder. It isn't necessarily the case though.

It's also entirely possible, tiny sample size permitting, that they accidentally reversed the spiritualist modifier and being more spiritualist is currently making it harder instead of easier... We have you, getting it when you don't want it, and both of us trying extremely hard with enormous difficulty. Assuming none of us are having bizarre luck (and I've played 10+ games exclusively until psionics showed up so I could be sure my complaint was valid so... That's some preposterous bad luck if so) our results indicate something might be up.

I have been spiritualist in my last few games, but was going for genetic ascension anyway.

 

[TheRevanchist25]

The story of Spiritualism, psionics, and the Shroud is a horror story.

In Stellaris, seemingly every spiritualist society eventually discovers psionics, initially sees it as confirmation of their religion, embraces it fully, and eventually ends up either completely abandoning their former beliefs or severely warping them to end up regularly sacrificing enormous swathes of psions (to backlash) in order to delve into the Shroud and make pacts with what are essentially demonic entities.

"An Asteroid, Carved" implies that this isn't actually an issue, canonically, though. Since you can get this for every empire, it implies that every empire's religion is literally the same religion, or at least, features The Benefactress (Composer? Instrument of Desire?), The Undaunted (Eater?), and The Percipient (Whispers, for sure). And that religion is explicitly based on shroud entities, already. So if you choose to interpret it that way, it's a different horror story: every religion in Stellaris is based on the Zroni's nightmare entities, and inspired by their influence. You don't devolve into human sacrifice and pacts with demonic entities: that's what your religion always was.

But it's not unique to spiritualists. The story of materialism, synthetics, and "minimal data loss" is extremely similar. The fact that you lose your entire species' identity (permanent losing access to traits like Thrifty, Conformists, Natural Engineers, and Nomadic which represent the way your species thinks) and the fact that it's trivially easy to transform other, completely alien-minded, pops into synthetics that are supposedly copies of the original, should tell you just how much truth there is to the idea that you're actually making a true copy of the original biological individual when you synthetically ascend.

At least the cosmic horror in e.g. Genetic Ascension is only there if you want it to be. You can choose not to add writhing tentacles to your pops (Polymelic), nerve staple your workers, or stratify your society in a dystopian way by applying specialized templates to planets. You can choose to simply make your pops generically stronger with simple improvements (like adding Resilient or Erudite).

But even the base level is somewhat horrifying. Imagine what it would mean for an individual, when the government imposes mandatory genetic alteration that does something like stripping away Intelligent from a species. "Please report to your local gene clinic to have your personal identity altered, and your mental faculties stripped away. Participation is mandatory."

I think a full religion expansion would be fun. But I don't think Spiritualism has been uniquely, unfairly misrepresented. Practically everything in this game is a horror story, if you think about it.

15% to resources from jobs, for all psionic pops. It's incredibly strong.

You're not wrong, but I was replying to a particular aspect, since this DD is about Spiritualism in particular. This blanket, default Warhammer 40,000 rip off version of Religion is beyond aggravating. Unfortunately I think fixing the Synthetic Ascension thing sailed long ago with Synthetic Dawn. I could be wrong, I hope I am, time will tell.

But we absolutely need a "Religion Expansion" that maybe adds a basic version of what Crusader Kings does. You set up your Religion with tenets, it's ethics, a head of faith, Are you a Monogod religion, do you have a Pantheon etc and spheres of influence Civilization style where you're trying to spread your religion to other nations and vice versa. Ideally it shouldn't be limited to a Spiritualist ethics Nation either but I won't get too picky about that.

Don't get me wrong, I like the Shroud stuff, it's fun content, but that shouldn't be the only thing Spiritualism is, it should be an optional path your religion can take.

 

[Jordedude1234]

Hallowed are the Ori.

 

[Farbros]

As I suggested multiple times. I believe, that you need to reduce the required exp for the next federation level by 50%. So lvl 2 -> lvl 3 should require 1,5x exp of lvl 1 -> 2 and so on. This will reduce the time required to get lvl 5 from 150 years to 81. Giving the players a chance to get in the games, which do not go past 2400 (I think most of the games). Otherwise some of the bonuses will never be used.

 

[Cassilda]

I'm happy to see some new flavor added to religion

 

[Psykhes]

Rarity is not equal, it depends on what tier a tech is in. There are 25 tier 4 engineering technologies and 56 tier 3 society technologies. That means if you're getting tier 3 tech going for psionics, wait irrelevant there are 55 choices other than the one you want...

Except to even be able to roll for Synthetics you need to have researched a tier 4 physics tech (Positronic AI) and also one of those 56 tier 3 society techs (Galactic Administration). You have have to view those and Synthetics a package. And of course Droids, but not counting those.

I usually get Psionic Theory as Materialist before Synthetics....

 

[LordWeider511]

Hi, developers. Please do back "end of planetary queue" in messages. I mean when planet/habitat ends the building queue, I want to see the message as this was in an earlier version of the game. Today all planets are in sectors, so maybe this is an issue why I don't see messages. It is very difficult when I play game, and there is no massage that the planet ends construction. Sometimes I have 20-50 planets and click each to see what is there is annoying.

Thanks dears.

 

[HFY]

Hi, developers. Please do back "end of planetary queue" in messages. I mean when planet/habitat ends the building queue, I want to see the message as this was in an earlier version of the game. Today all planets are in sectors, so maybe this is an issue why I don't see messages. It is very difficult when I play game, and there is no massage that the planet ends construction. Sometimes I have 20-50 planets and click each to see what is there is annoying.

The current build progress is visible in the outliner, so you don't have to click to see if a planet is NOT building anything -- it will have no progress bar in the outliner.

 

[Cadzon]

Anyone else think the ai got significantly better this patch? Admiral difficulty. I've never seen an ai have 1.5 million military power by 2400. I really like it, but I think I need to lower the difficulty ;p

 

[George Fernell]

----- Level 1 -----

Adoption effect - NICE

----- Level 2 -----

Protelzwlfng Envoys - Unremarkable.
Effectively frees up more envoys, witch is... OK. I don't think the part about ethics attraction really matters tho.

Promotion of Culture - Not good
Might become annoying, especially on planets with limited pops, gonna create the need to manually unasing this job.

Spread the Holly Word - U serious?
This is a case of classic Stellaris balancing right here, and I don't mean that in a good way. Considering the fact that this trait is USELESS for the 2 only real areas of Stellaris, the Military and the Economy, it at the very least should have been BROKEN in its own niche. Meanwhile its +25% voting- for ONE resolution tree and ONLY for president. Its ridiculous.
Since we have little time for drastic changes before version goes live: +50% to ALL federation members would be the LEAST this should do.
But some day into the future this garbage should be scraped.

----- Level 3 -----

Ecceshghd Funding - Good
Imitating trade league federation is always a good thing.

Heavenly Accord & Pursuit of Ascension - Not exciting but strong
Im still not sold on planetary ascension mechanic, it should have been something like "Infrastructure improvement" and be available to all, but whatever. Its is at least powerful when you commit to it.

----- Level 4 -----

Empowerment of the priestly class - BRUH
No one will ever need to use the unity colony designations so this might as well not exist.

Saintly Hierarchy - Great
More rulers = Good

Shroud delving - SUS
For RP cases of going spiritualist but not ascending psionically, this is useless, otherwise its nice.

----- Level 5 -----

Union of Faith - Approved

Zro Catalisys - SSS
Might finally incentivize some conflict for strategic resources because you cant produce Zro.

Reverent edicts - Good but Sad
Feels like something that should replace one of the useless traits from previous tiers, and be applied to all federation members.


Overall: Has a few busted gems in the middle of very underwhelming traits that exist only for "flavour text".

 

[Silesian Burd]

Synthetic Ascending got quite a nerf in 3.6 beta 2nd version, now it is the slowest path since you have to learn Synthetics(tier 4) to get hands on it. You get zero advantages until you learn tier 4 engineering tech, and even then, you have to finish Synthetics tradition to get its full benefits.

Yeah, Synthetics pay off is still strong, but now it takes ages to get that pay off. (Cyborg - tier2, Psionics theory - tier3, Genetics - tier3, Synthetics - tier4)

Cyborgs is probably too early, but the other two are from very rare tech or from tech chains that you have a low chance of getting in a series.

 

[Nevars]

Shroud delving - SUS
For RP cases of going spiritualist but not ascending psionically, this is useless, otherwise its nice.

Even as psionic this ability is still mixed cuz it has unmentioned effect of reducing your shroud buff and debuff duration too prob so you can't stacking shroud gacha.

Well on top of needing to be in this specific federation in the first place too.

This is one of the example of what I complained about psionic, it's always one step forward and two step back.

The dev never ever give psionic a clear upgraded with no downsides, hidden or not attached.

It's really infuriating that the weakest ascension path got this treatment.

 

[TrotBot]

Not to bleak. not to fancy. A wellcome addition.

But missed opportunity is definitely the auto casus belli against the Machine somewhere along the line.

I feel like this is intentional so the rogue servitor can sometimes take over if it subjugates the rest

 

[Pyrrhus5]

Hi there,

Great work on stellaris its still fantastic fun even after thousands of hours of gameplay.

I do have one little suggestion, it's s probably a bit late in the day for this, but I think you could rethink how the shroud works. There is a lot of rng involved and it's quite frustrating when you repeatedly fail to get anything or spawn something bad. The suggestion is that you make it work more like relics where there is a known outcome or outcomes for your spending of resource perhaps. Or possibly that you always get something rather than waiting x years and then getting nothing from it. Every time I chose psionic ascension I end up not using the shroud so much because it just irritates or I forget about it. Aligning with one of the psionic entities is really cool and thematic I just wondered if there is a way to make it less random.

Cheers

 

[Psykhes]

Cyborgs is probably too early, but the other two are from very rare tech or from tech chains that you have a low chance of getting in a series.

Either I misunderstand you or you misunderstood luxeritib or you have a misconception about the complexity of the tech chain for Genetic Ascension.
Are you really calling the tech chain for Genetics a "Low chance tech chain"?

This tech chain?
Genome Mapping (T1) -> Gene Tailoring (T3)
That's it. No other connections or prerequisites.

luxeritib complained that the tech you need for Synth Ascension comes far later than the other Ascension techs. Where I totally agree.
Cyborg is way too fast, there probably everyone agrees.
Psionic is okayish, but IMO too random. More ways to reduce the randomness a bit would be good.
Genetics is okay, but it could be a bit more complex.

Synthetics on the other hand....
Powered Exoskeletons (T1) -> Robotic Workers (T1)
Robotic Workers (T1) + Colonial Centralization (T2) -> Droids (T2)
Droids (T2) + Galactic Administration (T3) + Positronic AI (T4) -> Synthetics (T4)
If Genetics is a "Low chance tech chain" what would you call THAT?

IMO Galactic Administration (T3) and Positronic AI (T4) should be removed as prerequisite for Synthetics (T4).
And it would be still harder to get than the other Ascension techs.

 

[Sir Roderick]

The story of Spiritualism, psionics, and the Shroud is a horror story.

In Stellaris, seemingly every spiritualist society eventually discovers psionics, initially sees it as confirmation of their religion, embraces it fully, and eventually ends up either completely abandoning their former beliefs or severely warping them to end up regularly sacrificing enormous swathes of psions (to backlash) in order to delve into the Shroud and make pacts with what are essentially demonic entities.

"An Asteroid, Carved" implies that this isn't actually an issue, canonically, though. Since you can get this for every empire, it implies that every empire's religion is literally the same religion, or at least, features The Benefactress (Composer? Instrument of Desire?), The Undaunted (Eater?), and The Percipient (Whispers, for sure). And that religion is explicitly based on shroud entities, already. So if you choose to interpret it that way, it's a different horror story: every religion in Stellaris is based on the Zroni's nightmare entities, and inspired by their influence. You don't devolve into human sacrifice and pacts with demonic entities: that's what your religion always was.

But it's not unique to spiritualists. The story of materialism, synthetics, and "minimal data loss" is extremely similar. The fact that you lose your entire species' identity (permanent losing access to traits like Thrifty, Conformists, Natural Engineers, and Nomadic which represent the way your species thinks) and the fact that it's trivially easy to transform other, completely alien-minded, pops into synthetics that are supposedly copies of the original, should tell you just how much truth there is to the idea that you're actually making a true copy of the original biological individual when you synthetically ascend.

At least the cosmic horror in e.g. Genetic Ascension is only there if you want it to be. You can choose not to add writhing tentacles to your pops (Polymelic), nerve staple your workers, or stratify your society in a dystopian way by applying specialized templates to planets. You can choose to simply make your pops generically stronger with simple improvements (like adding Resilient or Erudite).

But even the base level is somewhat horrifying. Imagine what it would mean for an individual, when the government imposes mandatory genetic alteration that does something like stripping away Intelligent from a species. "Please report to your local gene clinic to have your personal identity altered, and your mental faculties stripped away. Participation is mandatory."

I think a full religion expansion would be fun. But I don't think Spiritualism has been uniquely, unfairly misrepresented. Practically everything in this game is a horror story, if you think about it.

15% to resources from jobs, for all psionic pops. It's incredibly strong.

Actually even without minimal data loss it would be still suicide because you're copying the information from a living body to a dead body, and it would be that even if it were 2 living bodies like clones, as long as the bodies are not the same it's always another person or object, twins are not the same person.

Also spiritualists should be grouped together with materialists as idealists and make an opposite ethic as realists.

And nerve stapling doesn't strip away intelligence, it strips away survival instincts and the fact that it doesn't allow specialists and ruler jobs is for balance.

 

[Sir Roderick]

Yeah, but the game doesn't offer any other kind of diplomatic power projection.
Economic ties are too simple to truely factor in. It isn't Vicky3 in which you (theoretically) can prevent a superpower from hurting you, by being a major supplier of one of their essential goods and they economically depend on you.
Stellaris doesn't have an economy deep enough to simulate that. So we'd need arbitrary modifiers to kind of pretend that is what is going on. If you are a major force in someone else's economy they will think twice about attacking you - even if they have a much larger stick than you.

Stellaris is space based, not planet based, so there should not be essential goods like Vic3 and being economically dependant:

What do you want to see from the Trade/Economy rework?

I'm hoping Empire customization and builds will have a meaningful effect on the new stuff (Exclusive options perhaps). I want my trade league, and my megacorporation for example to have an advantage in trade and *feel* different as opposed to...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

I wouldn't rely on Ricardo's work for much real life stuff TBH, especially not in any era in which labour is mobile to any significant degree...

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/08/ricardos-vice-virtues-industrial-diversity/
https://www.amazon.com/Question-Free-Trade-Economics-Discourse-ebook/dp/B01ETKDAXK

Briefly, you need the following assumptions to be true for Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage to work properly:

1. The comparative advantage is sustainable.
2. No externalities.
3. Production factors move between industries without cost.
4. No change in the ratio of income inequality.
5. Immobile international capital.
6. Short-term efficiency causes long-term growth.
7. Foreign productivity does not improve.
8. International labour is immobile to a large degree.

It didn't work then because there were things you could not get at home: you can't really grow coffee in Britain, for example. This does not apply when you replace "country" with "solar system".

On the other hand if you're talking about just the industries you wish to protect or whatever then you're just plain wrong, as the case of the USA or Germany showed. Their tariffs against foreign products protected their own rapid industrialising economies to the point where they overtook free trading Britain in fairly short order.


That's why I separated out strategic resources from everything else. In a realistic model, you can get everything you need in your home solar system. Absolute worst case scenario, you need more X than you can mine at the moment, so you have to build a few more solar panel satellites at your automated factory for your Dyson swarm to transmute it into existence from lighter elements.


Yes, this is an example of what I was talking about when I mentioned foreigners getting it for you cheaper.

Mind you, if you're talking about a civilisation that can build ringworlds and the like, then everything changes again because you no longer mine in the conventional sense - you break down entire planets into raw materials, leaving nothing behind. A solid Dyson sphere with a 100 million km radius and a shell thickness of 2km would weigh around 2e30kg, or about as much as our own star. Oh sure, you can build it out of carbon femtotubes or whatever, but at this stage in an economy...

1. You can actually ship enough materials from A to B, in which case you just broke the Stellaris combat / fleet system, because you can legitimately throw quadrillions of warships about in battle. Master of Orion 2's "Doom Stars" aren't super-capital monsters any more, they're the equivalent of ships of the line, or cruisers or something. Warships destroying planets through collateral damage becomes routine.
2. You do everything on site, in which case trade is irrelevant as nobody can possibly ship enough material to you for it to matter.


Star & planet formation says they're going to be present just about everywhere. Now sure, certain places will have higher or lower concentrations of certain elements, but that is not the same as "none", or even "none in useful quantities". I mean, our own middle-of-the-road solar system has pretty impressive quantities of... basically everything we need to fill the solar system with quadrillions of people living at better-than-first-world standards. That includes plenty of very heavy elements like uranium, remember.


Whilst I get what you mean, you give a bad example, as in this case it means that when the Klingons declare war, your military-industrial base has been hollowed out by lack of disrupters and related products, and you find yourself conquered depressingly quickly.

 

[Psykhes]

And nerve stapling doesn't strip away intelligence, it strips away survival instincts and the fact that it doesn't allow specialists and ruler jobs is for balance.

Not exactly. It is quite well described in the Alpha Centauri Wiki:

The neurological procedure is designed to make any subject a calm and loyal member of society. The ability to maintain a distinct self-image is significantly decreased, and they have difficulty placing their own interests ahead of those of the group. Nerve-stapled citizens are also emotionally detached, unable to feel anger or other strong emotions. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of much of their creative intelligence, and they are only able to perform well at tasks that are thoroughly familiar to them.

While it won't strip away all intelligence and identity of self, it will make major negative alterations to a subjects intelligence and personality.

The Alpha Centauri definition also fits very well with the effects it has in Stellaris (unaffected by happiness, can only perform "simple" jobs). "No survival instincts" cannot really explain those. Even if someone is totally fearless and does not mind risks, he will still want to have a comfortable and happy life. It might be shorter, because, hey who needs safety measures, but I do not see why such a "no survival instinct" subject would not want luxuries and comforts.