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Stellaris Dev Diary #60: Psionics and The Shroud

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary is going to be about psionics and one of the three ascension paths mentioned in Dev Diary #56: the Psionic Ascension Path.

Psionics
First, before we start digging into the way psionics will work Utopia, we should clarify that we are not removing any features from the free version of the game. If you have the Banks update but do not own Utopia, psionics will continue to work the same way they currently do: As technologies that you unlock. The only difference is that psionics can now only be researched by Spiritualist empires, though it is entirely possible for an empire that does not start out as Spiritualist to acquire psionics by shifting their empire ethics to Spiritualist over the course of the game, and once you start down the Psionic path it is possible to continue along it even if you stop being Spiritualist. This Spiritualist requirement applies whether or not you own Utopia.

If you *do* own the Utopia expansion, most of the psionic features will no longer appear as technologies. Only Psionic Theory, the very first psionic tech, is still researchable. To get access to the rest of the psionic path you will need to pick the 'Mind over Matter' Ascension Perk to start your empire on the Psionic Ascension Path. Picking this Ascension Perk will unlock latent psionic abilities among your primary species. A certain percentage of your leaders will have the 'Psychic' trait that grants a variety of advantages for the different leader classes, you will get access to Psionic Armies and also the special Psi Corps building. As with all Ascension Paths, you will need to have at least two Ascension Perk slots unlocked to pick 'Mind over Matter'.
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After picking Mind over Matter, you will need to continue amassing Unity and working your way through the Tradition trees. Once you have unlocked your fourth Ascension Perk slot, the 'Transcendance' Ascension Perk becomes available. This is the second stage in the Psionic Ascension Path and represents the full Psionic awakening of your species. From this point on, your entire species will get the 'Psionic' species trait and all leaders from this species will be full-fledged Psychics. In addition to the advantages granted by these traits, from now on there is also a chance that other species in your empire will psionically awaken, first as latent Psychics and then as fully awakened ones much like your own.
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The Shroud (Paid Feature)
Not long after fully awakening, your species will become aware of The Shroud. The Shroud is the realm from which psychics draw their power, a strange dimension very unlike the material universe, a place of opportunity and danger alike. To begin exploring The Shroud, you will need to complete a special society research project that once completed will give you access to The Shroud in the contacts view. Each time you wish to enter The Shroud you will need to expend a considerable amount of energy (in the form of Energy Credits), though this cost can be reduced by having access to the Zro Dust Strategic Resource.
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As for what can happen while exploring The Shroud... quite a few different things. We will not give them all away here, but some examples include unlocking psionic technologies, asking the spirits that dwell there for a boon, or even forming a Covenant with one of a number of particularly powerful spirits... a pact that will give great benefits, but may come at a terrible cost.
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That's all for today! Next week we'll be coming back to Factions and how you can use them to change your Empire Ethics. We'll also be talking about Indoctrination. See you then!
 
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Hertzila said:
How about 90% of your worlds get marked and after the time, your worlds simply die? Or get invaded with an absolutely ridiculously large psychic force? Wiz seemed pretty clear that it's generally a very bad idea. I'm expecting something closer to the birth of Slaanesh rather than a few Shroud Cultists.
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Remember AI rebellion starts out with single planet.
 
3sp0oky88me
 
I think locking Psionics to spiritualists was a good idea. I didn't like how it was so open for everyone else. It made the vanilla jump drive fairly useless when pretty much everyone could use the psi version. But will other empires still be able to reverse engineer the psi-tech or will it still be locked out even then?
 
"Telepathy has already replaced most verbal communications"

See, this is what I don't like in Stellaris sometimes, that could be massively improved without a whole lot of work: A lot of the descriptions on how your people react force themselves into roleplaying. What if I don't like my people to replace verbal communications with telepathy? What if a portion of my population wanted to do that but others didn't feel comfortable doing it because they fear losing cultural ties to their past? In fact, this sounds very much like what materialists would certainly do. This and other similar things could easily become event chains that add a little more depth to roleplaying, by virtue of giving the player more choices than just reading a piece of text and clicking the "OK" button.

For example: Now everyone's a psionic. What does it mean for privacy? Do we become more collectivized? Do people become more empathetic to others? Do people suddenly start using telepathy for nefarious purposes? Are a lot of people scared and confused? Does this shake society because telepaths were considered saints in our theocracy, and now everyone is either a saint or the previous dogma was false? Why not create a storyline akin to what the Humans went through in Babylon 5? Give me the chance to create a story out of what is supposed to be a big event. And don't turn it into something that always happens like a lot of other events. Make 2-3 scenarios and have 1 appear at random.
 
I wouldn't mind the linking of Spirituality to Psionics so much if Spirituality wasn't heavily linked to religion as well.

There's less room for a race of atheistic Shroud Explorers, or a race of machine worshippers.

I can understand the choice, I just think it's more a case of combining two ethics into one.
 
What happens if you are not spiritualist, but your neighbor is, you have some of his POPs, and he advances to Great Awakening? All POPs of his race in your empire gain psychic trait, the leaders recruitable from them get the trait, and will you be able to research psionics then?
 
Sounds like fun, although I hope they won't forget about other ethos'. They can keep the details for future dev diaries, but at least a "we're working on it" for materialists and the other ones would be nice.
 
Ornlu Wolfjarl said:
"Telepathy has already replaced most verbal communications"

See, this is what I don't like in Stellaris sometimes, that could be massively improved without a whole lot of work: A lot of the descriptions on how your people react force themselves into roleplaying. What if I don't like my people to replace verbal communications with telepathy? What if a portion of my population wanted to do that but others didn't feel comfortable doing it because they fear losing cultural ties to their past? In fact, this sounds very much like what materialists would certainly do. This and other similar things could easily become event chains that add a little more depth to roleplaying, by virtue of giving the player more choices than just reading a piece of text and clicking the "OK" button.

For example: Now everyone's a psionic. What does it mean for privacy? Do we become more collectivized? Do people become more empathetic to others? Do people suddenly start using telepathy for nefarious purposes? Are a lot of people scared and confused? Does this shake society because telepaths were considered saints in our theocracy, and now everyone is either a saint or the previous dogma was false? Why not create a storyline akin to what the Humans went through in Babylon 5? Give me the chance to create a story out of what is supposed to be a big event. And don't turn it into something that always happens like a lot of other events. Make 2-3 scenarios and have 1 appear at random.
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All this is probably pretty modable, so if you want to gear it towards what you're describing that could probably be done.
 
Wiz said:
We want to make the ethics more distinct by giving them more unique mechanics, basically.
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Guess this means more of a generalisation of Spiritualists as the "Religious" Guys. (Maybe it already existed, although not as clear)
 
A small balance issue: if the tech themselves are risky to pick up, can we make them non reverse engineerable. I mean I spent 4 ascension slot and lost a planet it would be a shame other can pick up the sick tech I literally sold my soul for. Especially since they aren't psionic themseves
 
I sense a massive balancing issue coming:

Right now, fanatic materialists get +15% research bonus plus an additional 10% from their unique building.
Now, with psionics, effectively all leaders of your empire will get 10% as well, which effectively accounts to a 10% bonus on all research once ou unlocked the perk.
Add the overall good happiness and ethic convergence bonus of spiritualists AND the access to amazing features and technologies and materialist ethics are pretty much useless. Only advantage is access to synths, and that comes with a price as well. I really hope Paradox looks into this, maybe gives materialists some additional buffs.

Because as a materialist, im gonna be triggered a.f. if spiritualists becomes too strong ;-)


As to everything else: I am not yet sure i like that after the magical space monsters they add some space wizards, but concerning gameplay that expansion is gonna be good. Just make the next expansion more Science-Fiction centered.
 
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Gaussia said:
Guess this means more of a generalisation of Spiritualists as the "Religious" Guys. (Maybe it already existed, although not as clear)
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They always had that vibe, though it was less "Religious" and more, as the name says, "Spiritualist". They always believed in souls and a higher power or existence. Not sure if that really counts as "religious".

LevKovacs said:
I sense a massive balancing issue coming:

Right now, fanatic materialists get +15% research bonus plus an additional 10% from their unique building.
Now, with psionics, effectively all leaders of your empire will get 10% as well, which effectively accounts to a 10% bonus on all research once ou unlocked the perk.
Add the overall good happiness and ethic convergence bonus of spiritualists AND the access to amazing features and technologies and materialist ethics are pretty much useless. Only advantage is access to synths, and that comes with a price as well. I really hope Paradox looks into this, maybe gives materialists some additional buffs.

Because as a materialist, im gonna be triggered a.f. if spiritualists becomes too strong ;-)
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Do note that they have not revealed anything about the bonuses the two other Species Endgame Perks give, not to mention the ordinary Ascension Perks. It's completely possible that cybernetics or gene tailoring of the other endgames have similar levels of bonuses, not to mention their own special things. I doubt the Shroud is the only special thing we'll see.
 
LevKovacs said:
I sense a massive balancing issue coming:

Right now, fanatic materialists get +15% research bonus plus an additional 10% from their unique building.
Now, with psionics, effectively all leaders of your empire will get 10% as well, which effectively accounts to a 10% bonus on all research once ou unlocked the perk.
Add the overall good happiness and ethic convergence bonus of spiritualists AND the access to amazing features and technologies and materialist ethics are pretty much useless. Only advantage is access to synths, and that comes with a price as well. I really hope Paradox looks into this, maybe gives materialists some additional buffs.

Because as a materialist, im gonna be triggered a.f. if spiritualists becomes too strong ;-)
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Don't you think sir that you jump into far-feteched conclusion? It's already known that materialistic empire can go full synth and be in effect immortal. I bet it's a bit more than just flavour text. :-D
 
Hertzila said:
They always had that vibe, though it was less "Religious" and more, as the name says, "Spiritualist". They always believed in souls and a higher power or existence. Not sure if that really counts as "religious".



Do note that they have not revealed anything about the bonuses the two other Species Endgame Perks give, not to mention the ordinary Ascension Perks. It's completely possible that cybernetics or gene tailoring of the other endgames have similar levels of bonuses, not to mention their own special things. I doubt the Shroud is the only special thing we'll see.
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Ah, thats right. Guess im thinking too much in terms of how ethics work right now.
 
Krebsig said:
I really hope that a Shroud-affiliated species can destroy themselves by summoning a Shroud endgame crisis - maybe in the form of a very strong Shroud entity. But you'd have to be a silly space elf to be so naive....
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Like, say, the Unbidden?

LordMist said:
I think that the bio path will be a generic path available to everyone, while the robotic path is for materialists and the psionics path is for spiritualists.
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That would also fit with the correlation of the Ascension Paths with Endgame Crises. Materialists are most likely to unlock the robot techs that lead to AI rebellion, Spiritualists have the greatest chance of getting the tech that most attracts the Unbidden, and the Prethoryn munch on everyone else.
 
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