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Stellaris Dev Diary #56 - Ascension Perks

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today we'll be talking about a feature that was hinted at in last dev diary, Ascension Perks. Ascension Perks are related to the Traditions and Unity system, but is a paid feature in the (unannounced) expansion accompanying the 1.5 'Banks' update, rather than a part of the update itself. Those without the expansion will get full access to the Traditions and Unity features, but not to the Ascension Perks themselves.

Ascension Perks
The idea behind the Ascension Perks is to provide more unique unlockable features for Empires, and to provide the player with the ability to determine an 'endgame' for their species: What their empire is striving towards. Perhaps your goal is to go all-in on AI, replacing the frail biological bodies of your pops with immortal machines, or to harness the psionic potential of your species and reach a higher form of existence, allowing your empire to tap into other planes of being? All these and more are covered by the Ascension Perk system.
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Each time you complete a Tradition tree, you will unlock one Ascension Perk slot, of which there are 8 in total. There may also be other ways to unlock slots, such as from certain rare technologies or as a reward for a particular event chain. This slot can then be filled with any of the Ascension Perks available to you. The final number of perks is not yet set down, but there are currently more than 20 and there will likely be more added. Ascension Perks have pre-requisites, which can for example be a particular technology or tradition, a certain number of Ascension Perk slots to be unlocked, or a specific ethos or government type. Some Ascension Perks are one-offs that simply provide a bonus to a particular area of your empire: For example, a bonus to border range, or cheaper terraforming. Others unlock new features, such as the ability to construct new types of space structures (more on in later dev diaries).

Finally there are the three 'Species Endgame' paths: The biological path, the spiritual path and the synthetic path. These three paths each consist of two perks, the first of which unlocks access to the second once a number of other pre-requisites have been met. The paths are mutually exclusive, and once you start heading down one of them, the other two are locked off.
  • The Biological Path focuses on mastery over biological evolution. The first level of it gives access to more gene points and significantly cuts the cost of genemodding projects, while the second level expands the options available during genemodding in addition to further providing more points and less cost.
  • The Psionic Path focuses on developing the psionic potential of your population. The first level unlocks new psionic technologies and benefits, while the second level allows your empire to reach a higher level of existance and communicate with the beings present there.
  • The Synthetic Path focuses on the replacement of biology with machinery. The first level allows you to turn your population partly synthetic through the use of cybernetics, while the second level replaces your biological pops with robots, turning your empire entirely synthetic.
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That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about the concept of species rights and obligations.

Also about eating pops.
 
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Derp said:
prove that I'm not psychic
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Proving a negative is regarded as bad form. The onus is on you to prove the affirmative :D
 
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Derp said:
I knew you were going to say that
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But that was determinism not psykerism, when I shoot a schoolgirl, I know the cops are gonna come, it does not make me psychic...
 
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Hypothesis: The three endgame paths are based around the endgame crises.

It's already suggested that the Synthetic and Psionic ascension paths are associated with the Materialist and Spiritualist ethos, respectively, with Biological being the "neutral" option. And we all know which crises Materialist and Spiritualist techs cause.

So, with Synthetic ascension your POPs become robots, and with Biological ascension they become rapidly-adapting genetic superbeings, but what does Psionic do?
 
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Zarpaulus said:
Hypothesis: The three endgame paths are based around the endgame crises.

It's already suggested that the Synthetic and Psionic ascension paths are associated with the Materialist and Spiritualist ethos, respectively, with Biological being the "neutral" option. And we all know which crises Materialist and Spiritualist techs cause.

So, with Synthetic ascension your POPs become robots, and with Biological ascension they become rapidly-adapting genetic superbeings, but what does Psionic do?
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I have talked about this too and yes! The Spiritualist have to do with Unbidden, the Materialist have to do with AI revolt, and the Biological path has to do with the Prethoryn! That is exactly what I think!
 
Will Species on the biological path be able to create super scientists as population ?
 
Zarpaulus said:
but what does Psionic do?
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Perk description mentioned some voices. If fiction taught us something is that voices from beyond are always willing to share their knowledge. With some minor drawbacks.
Gameplay-wise I suspect bio-ascension will have something to do with traits, either adding new ones or boosting existing. Psi-ascension might have something to do with happines/research/ethics convergence bonus.
 
Why did I think of Total Annihilation? would be cool to have civil war too. Pops resisting the Ascension path you choose.

Also maybe a feature, where certain given pops are: in my case, example - Imperialized Terran pop, and non Imperialized terran pop, ones loyalty, happiness, and factors would be different.
(IE- I'm Mexican but my loyalties are to the USA thus I'm Americanized.)

Romans that conquered native people were slowly Romanized and some didn't; wouldn't or create problems, flee to another region like stated in Diary,(not fully pledge allegiance and so on), like in today modern world,

Or when recruited non Romans in too their Roman Army would Romanize them through their military doctrine, became citizen of Rome of course, Rome stagnated in the end of late era of roman army and not holding to policies thus military doctrine changed and became different.

just my thoughts.
 
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Will there be an ability to 'sublimate'?

That usually seems to be the end-goal in most sci-fi games/books/media for a species.

Maybe make it an end game proper, or maybe leave you in charge of a remnant of your species/empire.
Or mabe just put you in the pilot seat of a newly space-faring species somewhere in the galaxy, or another random empire?

It'd be neat to be able to come across the ruins of your ascended species as another, marvelling at these awe-inspiring remnants of a long-gone species, more questions than answers, etc.

The cycle completed. :p
 
Nurizeko said:
Will there be an ability to 'sublimate'?

That usually seems to be the end-goal in most sci-fi games/books/media for a species.

Maybe make it an end game proper, or maybe leave you in charge of a remnant of your species/empire.
Or mabe just put you in the pilot seat of a newly space-faring species somewhere in the galaxy, or another random empire?

It'd be neat to be able to come across the ruins of your ascended species as another, marvelling at these awe-inspiring remnants of a long-gone species, more questions than answers, etc.

The cycle completed. :p
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That does not seem to fit in with the general theme of Stellaris.

Though, one of the screenshots on Twitter showed a Shround entity telling the player that "it is not your time to reach the end of the cycle yet, but it could be." And accepting would give you massive bonuses to everything for fifty years, with the modifier called "The End of Days".
 
I already thought most highly of Stellaris at launch. With the wonderful innovations to the game since (Utopia promising to add yet another trump card into the equation), this is now by far my favorite game ever of the empire building genre.
 
Apologies for necroing a relatively old thread but I'm currently re-reading all the Utopia/Banks dev diaries. There are a lot of pages in this thread so the answer might be in there, however, I'll ask anyway. Is it the case that to give yourself the maximum (only?) possibility of going down one of the three species endgame paths you need to collect 2 specific ascension perks? At the moment we don't know what these, or indeed a lot of the perks are?
 
PaulMClem said:
Apologies for necroing a relatively old thread but I'm currently re-reading all the Utopia/Banks dev diaries. There are a lot of pages in this thread so the answer might be in there, however, I'll ask anyway. Is it the case that to give yourself the maximum (only?) possibility of going down one of the three species endgame paths you need to collect 2 specific ascension perks? At the moment we don't know what these, or indeed a lot of the perks are?
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I'm not sure I understood you correctly, but you need to unlock any two perks before first ascension perk becomes available. There are 20 perks to choose from (6 are about ascension paths).
 
Milten said:
but you need to unlock any two perks before first ascension perk becomes available.
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Really? I thought you got access to ascension perks when you finished a tradition tree (plus one or two other rare possibilities such as events or tech).

All I wanted to confirm was whether these species endgame paths were each tied to two specific ascension perks i.e. you have to use two of your eight slots on these perks otherwise that "endgame path" option is closed off.
 
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PaulMClem said:
Really? I thought you got access to ascension perks when you finished a tradition tree (plus one or two other rare possibilities such as events or tech).

All I wanted to confirm was whether these species endgame paths were each tied to two specific ascension perks i.e. you have to use two of your eight slots on these perks otherwise that "endgame path" option is closed off.
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You're essentially right. But some ascension perks require you to have unlocked a certain number of ascension perks. Ascension path perks are in that category and require two and four slots unlocked for the first and second level of that ascension path respectively.
 
PaulMClem said:
Really? I thought you got access to ascension perks when you finished a tradition tree (plus one or two other rare possibilities such as events or tech).

All I wanted to confirm was whether these species endgame paths were each tied to two specific ascension perks i.e. you have to use two of your eight slots on these perks otherwise that "endgame path" option is closed off.
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Ah, got it. Yes, endgame paths consist from two respective perks. They are endgame paths practically speaking.
 
I'm reading "Hydrogen Sonata", the last book of Iain Banks' Culture series, it's about the last days of a civilization about to Sublime, leaving the Real universe behind. In the meantime, they have to worry about scavengers trying to take advantage of their more-or-less dying state to steal their technology.

There's also mention of "Elder" races who remain in the Real but stagnant, and often end up picked off by younger and more vibrant races.

As for the Culture, though:
I tell you, I wish to have no more to do with the promise, process, or result of Outloading, Instigating, Subliming, Enfolding or any other synonym relating to the activity or state of basically buggering off up one's one or indeed anybody else's fundament.

-CLOU Caconym
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Are there triggered events for the second level, or do you only have 1 shot to do it, like how there are different results with Infinity Machine. I reached Transcendence, got 3 events so far, one got me the Psionic Shields, the other gave me Psionic Latent for my pops. Still haven't breached the shroud, even though I spent the credits and completed the research project. I'm just wondering if another event will trigger so I can finally see what happens :)
 
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