[ICBM 16]

Mechanist can't be swapped out later.

Now that I'm looking at it on my PC and not my phone... I have now noticed that it does in fact say "This Civic provides no additional benefits and cannot be removed once picked." for both Syncretic Evolution and Mechanist. Darn phone making it hard to see that. Thanks for letting me know earlier, would have been at least 10 hours before I knew for sure.

Still think both are going to be great and fun civic options! Especially considering the early game advantage both can give someone.

 

[Knotz]

All of this sounds amazing and makes great strides (at least on paper, there's still the implementation) at adding that sense of character/flavour vanilla lacked.

 

[BBQmaker]

Nice Blog!

 

[Spartan878]

I want to know how the AI rebellion with react to the Hive minds. Seeing how they are psionic in nature the rebellious robots would not be able to infiltrate the Hive's worlds no matter how much flesh they place on their mechanical bodies.

 

[ross-g]

There is Mandates and Agendas, as before.

Are you considering re-working these mechanics in future? Currently they feel quite lacking and superfluous, never relevant to your current political circumstances (compared to say, the missions in EU4).

I had been hoping that changes to them would be detailed in this DD, but I guess Banks can't encompass everything!

 

[Bananabus]

For all the people wanting hive minds to be a bit different. keep in mind that hive minds have their own set of civics, so customization will be possible.Personally I'm curious what the "shadow council" civic will do.

 

[HahTse]

Why doesn't the Hive get the other two ascension perks?

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

Syncretic Evolution: Your species evolved along with another, subservient species. A second species is randomly generated on your homeworld replacing some of your primary species' Pops. They always have the Proles (rebalanced in Banks) and Strong traits, making them excellent soldiers and workers but less ideal for intellectual pursuits. This Civic provides no additional benefits and cannot be removed once picked.

Well crap, gonna have to revisit my Dixie Pigs Space Confederacy. Now that I won't have to roll the dice on finding or modifying a habitability compatible slave species and hope for some proles to ascend... it would be interesting to know of any changes made to the Decadent trait as taking this civic would limit its penalty down to either a small window if you colonize with your core species or not at all if you can colonize with your proles and just expect core species migration to fill in your thinkers and traders.

Mechanist: Your species is obsessed with the pursuit of robotics. This Civic requires you to be Materialist and has you start with the Robotic Workers and Powered Exoskeletons technologies and a population of worker robots to do the farming and mining for you, replacing some of your primary species' Pops. This Civic provides no additional benefits and cannot be removed once picked.

Huh, gonna be interesting to see if the initial technology boost, resource savings and removal of RNG going this route is superior to the trait sacrificed to afford it in the long term. I suspect pairing it with a synergizing traits and ethics can make it a solid net gain. Might actually discover that starting as a materialistic dictatorship to get up into tier-2 and tier-3 techs and then deciding if transitioning into a materialistic oligarchy is worthwhile based on how many techs are still needed to get synths is a worthwhile strategy.

Fanatic Purifiers: Your empire will not tolerate the existance of any other sentient life. This Civic requires you to be Fanatic Xenophobe/Militarist and gives very large boosts to the effectiveness of your military and gives you Unity from purging Xeno Pops, but disables all diplomacy with other species and forces all Xeno Pops in your empire to be purged (though you get to choose the method of extermination). All other regular empires will also have a massive relations malus with you, the one and only exception being Fanatic Purifiers from the same species.

Can't see alot of ways to play this viably. You're either going to spread wide asap and keep your expansion going to strategically prevent a federation that can oppose you, using the Unity bonuses to soften expansion penalties. Or you're going to start tall to get a tech lead to magnify these 'very large boosts' and then start a blitz campaign of extermination and colonization around midgame, fueled by forced labor camp style extermination in developed worlds.

Okay, so all three of these seem to focus your empire into very specific play styles, probably not ideal for optimal play but if you know that you want to play one of these specific styles going in they seem like a solid way to reduce RNG and frustration. I approve.

 

[KaluProBro]

Time for fanatic purification everyone! Cant wait for this goverment update

 

[Spidee]

To a hive mind, captive populations could be seen as simply captured organic components, and that it's completely fair and normal to devour them. It'd probably be baffled as to why the Human-mind doesn't eat its captured organic components in turn.

This has been covered in popular Sci-Fi. have you read Ender's game? We had an example of a Hive species. Fighting humanity, taking humans apart, because she though individuals were just human components and was trying to communicate. However if you have diplomacy, that means, that you are capable of discussing idea/abstract items with the other nations. That means, that you understand, even though you cannot identify/comprehend, that each unit is a unique being, mini-hive and that consuming one is essentially killing off a hive-mind.
Parallel - eating horses - some people view it is normal, some as delicacy, to some it is an atrocity. But if the crown-prince of XYZ brings you a prized stallion, winner of 50 races as a gift, you would really have to be clueless (and not a spacefaring race) to cook it for dinner.

 

[Spidee]

There are other way to deal with interstellar distance to a Hive Mind. They don't have to be exclusive to Psi only.

You could deal with distance between Hive Mind clusters by having both running in parallel, as far to deciding what to do with local issues, and collectively come together to make decide to go to war and other high level issues.

A good analogy would be to have distributed computing power, also known as cloud computing, where a single program is being run across multiple devices and all come together to present a coherent result.

As soon as you have instant communication, this could also be mechanical. Or Ender's game solution.

 

[Spidee]

While I too would love different types of hive mind, let's consider how utterly difficult would be for a hive mind type being to recognize even the concept of things like individual rights. After all, all that it has experienced are disposable drones. To it, wiping off the inhabitants of a planet would be no really different than disposing of the previous empire's buildings. For a comparison, imagine how much would be alien to us a being composed of sapient cells, to which cutting hair amounts to murder.

Once the cells start communicating with us, sharing advanced nuclear fusion technology with us, when I think as a species we would educate and understand, that shaving fur of that pink fox like creature is considered bad manners, exterminatus SOL and we would not do it.

 

[Luckmann]

Fix them how? They tried to fix them by renaming them.

By restoring Individualist vs. Collectivist, instead of the non-dichotomous relationship between Authoritarian and Egalitarian. It's not just politically illiterate, it's not nearly as relevant as an ethos as Individualist vs. Collectivist.

 

[Spidee]

I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing. You're the one who brought up balance as an excuse for adding a civic that grants the psionic theory tech at game start. The point I'm making is that the advantage of machinist isn't that you start with exoskeletons and robotics researched; you can actually get those techs very quickly. It's that you start the game with some robot pops already built, meaning a significantly higher mineral and food production. I can't imagine what sort of psionic-ish starting civic could grant a similar early game advantage. So why is it needed?

Given the random nature of individual start systems, their resource distribution, I consider this a minor point. A perfect balance, unless you are playing a MP for the win, rather than fun, was never needed. Look at HOI, and EUIC, how the nations starting points are balanced (ever played as Salzburg?).

 

[Dsingis]

Furthermore, Hive Minds are deeply biological entities, and fundamentally incompatible with the Synthetic Ascension Path

B.but what about the Borg (Star Trek), the Cybermen (Doctor Who) or the Replicators (Star Gate)?
They are all part of a hive mind and are either fully or part synthetic.

 

[Bisougai]

B.but what about the Borg (Star Trek), the Cybermen (Doctor Who) or the Replicators (Star Gate)?
They are all part of a hive mind and are either fully or part synthetic.

Also (not completly) the Cylon (Battlestar Galactica) ^^

 

[henzington]

I am curious since hive mind doesn't have happiness does habitability matter at all.

 

[General Retreat]

B.but what about the Borg (Star Trek), the Cybermen (Doctor Who) or the Replicators (Star Gate)?
They are all part of a hive mind and are either fully or part synthetic.

That doesn't make them canon according to Stellaris' lore though. The game is its own setting, even if it is randomised/procedurally generated.

You keep using that word. I do not believe it means what you think it does

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus-malus

Why doesn't the Hive get the other two ascension perks?

The lore fluff behind this seems to be that hive minds are controlled by an unusual passive psionic effect that doesn't/can't manifest as regular powers. They're psionically latent, but not active.

WMG ahead: My personal headcanon is that access to psionic powers is dependent on receptive sentients tapping into the shroud, and that is effectively gated by the capricious wills of shroud denizens. They invite you in or consciously keep you out (hence materialists can't into shroud. )

Shroud entities block access to hive minds because a singular entity of such magnitude and sheer psionic potential would end up ascending to godhood and giving birth to Tzeench or something.

As for cybernetic ascension, there seems to be a biological component to the hive mind connection. There isn't an individual drone consciousness to transplant and doing so would break the hive connection anyway. It's not in the hive's interest to go synthetic.

 

[Alblaka]

does habitability matter at all.

You can't colonize planets without appropriate habitability (40%?) and it massively slowly growth rate if not met.

But ye, technically the 'no happyness' skips habitibility a fair bit. Unless they get the same 'happiness penality' from habitibility applied anyways or in a new naming cover.

 

[Wulfram]

Has the electoral system been changed at all?