[Untrustedlife]

I can see several major issues with those paths. First, the change from food "upkeep" for pop into energy. I can see a MASSIVE deficit happening in energy, especially in large empire. Bankrupt and empire destroying scale of deficit. Could we have the hydroponic farm turned into energy producing building of the same tier when this happen ? Since they become obsolete anyway. Or turn the food into energy (I don't know, biofuel ?). Also, it will force us to open the sector into being able to rebuild building, which may lead to issues by itself.
With the biological path, if the time required to mod a pop is not changed, we are looking at years of society research by endgame to change every pop of a single species. So, most likely a century or so for everyone in your empire if you play several races. That would be ridiculous.
Then, will we have the option to mod a species several time ? Right now, if you use gene mod on a species, we can't gene mod it later on, even if we have access to more gene point. So if I modify a species earlier on, then unlock more gene stuff in the biological path, I'd be screwed.

Dyson spheres for energy, problem solved, just build one before ascending.

The time to mod pops has been changed and gets less and less as you ascend, wiz has confirmed this on twitter, so no need to worry about that.

Also, since when could we not gene mod a species more then once? Yes we can gene mod species later even in the current game, you gain trait points as you tech up , you didnt know that? In my current game I have genemodded my entire species twice. There was never a limitation there. The only limitation was trait points.

Well maybe there was, but its definitely not true in the current version.

 

[Rock Lord]

So regular Synthetics will still exist?

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

The main issue is simply that they haven't mentioned anything, while they could have put a single sentence right at the end of this DD saying "oh btw, there are events for all of this."

They already specified that all the Ascension Paths have events and additional costs to advance between steps in earlier Dev Diaries, though.

 

[Lothmar]

Holograms can't mine minerals.

Maybe the Synths are drones teleoperated from the planetary server?

Unless they're hard light constructs etc.

 

[kgptzac]

It's time to update the portraits for synthetics... We can have different biological species "ascend" to become synthetics, thus each should have a "mechanized" portrait that shows resemblance to their past biological form, instead of being a singular, bland and rather cliched representation of robots.

 

[Riekopo]

"you will be able to add negative traits and remove positive traits"

 

[Jorlem]

Will we get access to other portraits than the current robots?

Erudite: Upgrades from Intelligent, gives +20% science production and +1 leader skill levels.

Might be worth considering a different name for this trait, Erudite doesn't really make sense for an inherited trait.

There's a typo in the second line of that text box, an extra apostrophe on the word "human". Also, that whole first block of text reads awkwardly. It should probably be combined into one sentence, something like this:

Gone are the days when the survival of our species was at the mercy of chance, when a human's fate was decided by the whim's of nature's genetic lottery.

(Also, "human" should not be capitalized, while something like "Earthling" or "Terran" would be.)

 

[Emraldis]

They already specified that all the Ascension Paths have events and additional costs to advance between steps in earlier Dev Diaries, though.

That could easily mean the techs that they already refer to...

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

That could easily mean the techs that they already refer to...

...no?

Go back and re-read prior Dev Diaries dealing the whole "Ascension Perks/Path" content.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Wait, so I read all that and I keep coming back to... MARS!!!

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Wait, so I read all that and I keep coming back to... MARS!!!

QUAID

 

[Zarathustra_the]

@Wiz you mentioned in the top post that the shroud is a new mechanic, is that mechanic extensible via modding?

 

[TheDungen]

Compared to the pressure on Venus? Nah, it's fine. I mean, it is silly, but compared to the whole idea of colonising planets it's fine.

I'm sorry what, yeah I think we need to go no further than this if you thin that the idea of colonizing other planets is silly no serious discussion can be held from there. What you view as silly I view as essential to the survival of mankind. The notion that we could survive without colonizing other planets is what's silly.

 

[AlphaAsh]

@Wiz you mentioned in the top post that the shroud is a new mechanic, is that mechanic extensible via modding?

From what we've seen of the Shroud, it's a re-skin of enclaves, minus the physical location. A dialog interface to events. So as extensible as your knowledge of hooking scripted events off that. Take a look at Folk's Mercenary Enclave for an example.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

QUAID

See you at the party, Richter!

 

[PalmettoExplorer14]

I just realized something: if the Biological Ascension Path gets Gene Warriors which are the best army in the game and do a whole lot of damage than psionic armies, won't those who take the Biological Ascension Path be overpowered in comparison to the psionic Ascension empire?

Also if I remember correctly, all of the Fallen Empires use Gene Warriors. So what does that mean exactly?

And why lock the Gene Warriors behind one of the Ascension paths? I can understand psionic armies but the mechanical Ascension Path doesn't get an army so I'm not sure what's going on here.

 

[Atlasien]

Someone is having too much fun at the GDC - so many obvious questions not preempted.

Synthetic path:
1. Will cyborg upgrade include all POPs? What about slaves? Will it go by species or by planet, similar to genemods? Any impact on consumer goods cost, for making implants?
2. Same about synth upgrade - all POPs or choose?
3. AI rebellion toward synth empires - allies, friends, neutral?
4. Species rights post synth ascension - will all the options still be available?
5. Will there be any difference between ascended synths and "normal"?
6. What about portraits? The existing synth one has been shown, are there new options? Is keeping existing portrait an option?
Note that Wiz has stated on twitter: "New synth bodies will be fully functional." in regards to you know what. So organic-looking portraits should be made available.

Biological path:
1. Have you considered portrait swap (within same category) as an additional perk for advanced gene modding?
2. What is the new negative trait shown in the screenshot?
3. Have you fixed the issue where gene modding POPs on any planet requires access to homeworld (blocked by border closure)?
4. Any cooldown on repeated modifications of same POPs?
5. Can the exclusive traits appear randomly? On non-player species only perhaps?
6. Any changes to uplifting? IIRC there was a bug that modifying uplifted species would remove happiness bonus.
7. Not a question: as presented seems underwhelming compared to the other two ascensions.

 

[ModZero]

I'm sorry what, yeah I think we need to go no further than this if you thin that the idea of colonizing other planets is silly no serious discussion can be held from there. What you view as silly I view as essential to the survival of mankind. The notion that we could survive without colonizing other planets is what's silly.

This is a fundamental disagreement, because:

• There is no terraforming or habitability solution that couldn't be better applied on Earth, but this is something one could still dispute.
• Quality of life of people who actually live, and ensuring that those who will live have a good life, are qualities far more important to me than how long humanity will survive. If the cost of survival is misery — and it would be, even people who do go to space and love it are rather ecstatic about being finally back from there — then I won't go for it. This is the fundamental disagreement here, I actually think colonisation is wrong.

The cost of colonising other planets would be misery for many, many people, until we somehow got those places to be liveable. Of course with certain technologies it might become their own choice, but right now, the only way you'd get many colonists would be through desperation or disinformation — and neither of those are ethically acceptable means of ensuring consent.

And now, I've been way too serious in this thread, so I'll bail out. Here's a kitten.

 

[Emraldis]

Here's a kitten.

Gah! That's not a kitten! You lied to me!

 

[Czaristan]

They've also mentioned in their streams that they have the next 3 or so major expansions blocked in- so anything like changes to the ascension paths after their initial implementation come Utopia, are a long way off. I'd rather wait an extra month and really feel like they were all powerful, end-game, mechanics-changing choices rather than having impressive, but somewhat lackluster changes in the interim until later polish.

This is my concern as well. Paradox's history suggests that no matter where they end up on with ascension perks, they will be set in stone for years. I think multiple models for synthetics, say one per species group, would be really necessary to give at least some diversification. That plus keeping original traits and terraforming to AI worlds with some kind of benefit would actually make that path stand out a bit.