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Stellaris Dev Diary #78: Robomodding & Robot Changes

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris dev diary. Today we'll be talking about some changes coming to robots in the 1.8 'Čapek' update, including the ability to modify Robotic pops. All changes mentioned in this dev diary are part of the free update.

Robomodding
In the 1.8 update, it will now be possible to create different 'models' of Robot, Droid and Synth pops through a system similar to genemodding. By researching the 'Machine Templates' engineering technology, you will get access to robomodding and a single robot trait point. More robot trait points can be gained through further engineering research. Using these points, you can create templates with different configurations of traits. Rather than using the basic biological traits, robotic Pops have their own set of traits, some of which are not available to the more basic robotic types. Once a template is created, it is immediately available to be used when building robotic Pops on a planet, and existing robotic Pops can be converted into that template through a special Robomodding project that uses Engineering research.
2017_07_20_2.png

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In addition to adding robomodding, we've also added support for switching Pop portraits into the genemodding and robomodding systems. If set to be permitted for a particular species class, that species class can have its portrait changed to any other portrait in the same species class as part of the template creation process. This system is also fully accessible to modders. But more on that in a later dev diary.
2017_07_20_4.png


One final note: Since the addition of traits to robotic Pops will make them, and Synthethically Ascended empires, stronger overall, we're going to be doing a balance pass on them and possibly making changes and/or buffing the other ascension paths before 1.8 comes out.

Robot Building
We've also made some improvements to how you build robotic pops. Robotic pops are now built through their own 'Build Pop' interface in the planet view, which lets you select what robotic model you want to build and also has the option to start building several Pops at a time. If this option is checked, you will be able to build robotic Pops on any number of tiles with one simple click each, massively cutting down on the clicking needed to fill up a planet. Note that this is only a UI change, and does not in any way change the mechanics of how robotic Pops are built.
2017_07_18_2.png


AI Policy & Techs
The way the AI policy works has always seemed inconsistent: Outlawing AI prevents you from building dumb robotic workers, but does not prevent researching Sapient AI or installing it on a spaceship. To address this issue and open up for more varied use of robots, we've changed the AI policy to be about sapience rather than about robots, and reworked some related technologies. The Sentient AI technology has been renamed Positronic AI, and is no longer a dangerous technology in itself (its effect has also been reduced to +5% rather than +10% research speed). The AI policy will not appear until this technology has been researched, as it's simply not relevant up to that point. Once it *does* appear, it has the following effects:
Outlawed: Sapient AI is outlawed. No effect on robots and droids. Prevents research and use of sapient combat computers. Synths can be researched and built, but have their sapience removed, removing their ability to feel happiness and essentially making them into slightly upgraded droids.
Servitude: Sapient AI is allowed, but Sapient AIs are considered property and have their free will restricted. No effect on robots and droids. Synths can be researched and built, but have slight penalties to energy and research production as a result of these restrictions. They also cannot join factions.
Citizen Rights: Sapient AIs are given full individual rights. No effect on robots and droids. Synths have citizen rights and can join factions, but some traits that depend on Synths being property (such as Domestic Protocols, which increases happiness for owner Pops) lose their effect and can no longer be added to new templates.
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Manual Disassembly
Finally, since outlawing AI no longer purges robotic Pops, we've added back the option to manually disassemble them. This can be done to Robots, Droids and Synths without citizen rights, and works the exact same way as a regular 'extermination' purge, killing the Pop(s) off in a relatively short time.
2017_07_19_1.png


That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about combat balance, ship components and the changes we're doing to put some clothes back on those naked corvettes.
 
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A-150 said:
If I was in a robot body I would never play video games in my positronic brain, I wouldn't want a game to lag my body to a crawl, or freeze my brain, or crash my system. So bad example :p
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You are right. Transhumans will build Matrioshka brains to run video games:


10^40 GHz? Imagine a full 100 billion star galaxy in Stellaris... :eek:
 
Insane Commander said:
You are right. Transhumans will build Matrioshka brains to run video games:


10^40 GHz? Imagine a full 100 billion star galaxy in Stellaris... :eek:
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Way better than the science nexus and even the infinity machine, that thing could probably simulate an entire galaxy or more. Stellaris would run so fast that after 1 second at the fastest speed, the in game year would be a trillion.:D
 
@Wiz

Any word on this:

Ambereyed said:
would it be possible for egalitarian empires to give synths full rights? It's quite illogical that you need to treat them as servants in those empires. Having those slave synths also screws egalitarian faction and influence income.
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It was incredibly frustrating to find out that Egalitarians are upset by enslaved synths, and yet are also unwilling to emancipate the synths. "Here, have a -10% happiness penalty that can only be gotten rid of by having devoted egalitarians commit genocide..." :confused:
 
How about having the ability to selectively choose which robots become sapient? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense that non-sapient machines suddenly stop being a thing once you allow sapient AI.
 
Note: remember to take these changes into the faction's views on AI. Make sure the Xenophile Factions no longer get mad because your empire has non-sentient robot pops as "slaves".
 
Princess Stabbity said:
Xenophobia is built on hypocrisy and inconsistency. Xenophobic leaders are opportunists who come into power by exploiting the weaknesses of their own society, by twisting their agenda to appeal to whatever their voters/subjects fear at the time (and, of course, adapting it whenever a new "threat" comes up) by promoting distrust towards convenient scapegoat groups, by appropriating foreign ideas, filtering them through propaganda and claiming as their own.

So I imagine xenophobic pops are quite used to just swallowing whatever their government feeds them without stopping to think. That suspiciously Blorg-shaped droid offering hugs to passerbys? That's totally fine, it's actually based on the image of a proto-human that God-Empress June unearthed with her own bare hands somewhere back on Earth. The Blorg actually genetically modified themselves to resemble IT for the express purpose of mocking human heritage! The nerve!

There. Blorg-bots should now be digestible to even the most fanatical xenophobe on the planet ^^
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I agree that Earth xenophobia is built on hypocrisy and inconsistency, but that's largely because we only have exactly one fully sapient specie* and have yet to encounter a truly alien culture. An argument that someone just like myself is somehow inherently more dangerous than myself is necessarily intellectually bankrupt. However, in context of Stellaris I would say that distrust/paranoia is more of a defining feature of xenophobic ethos than hypocrisy. It's a line of reasoning that goes something like this: "One that does not think like me cannot be predicted, one that cannot be predicted cannot be trusted, one that cannot be trusted must be controlled, one that cannot be controlled must be eliminated."

Note that, strictly speaking, there are possible encounters in Stellaris that could very much result in xenophobia being a perfectly reasonable, if extreme, reaction. There are species that only see other races as food, if even that. Stellaris xenophobia also isn't necessarily some aggressive form of space fascism, it's possible to have an empire of xenophobic egalitarian pacifists who really just want to be left alone. That said, I would generally expect them to be as distrustful and paranoid towards any type of full AI as they would be towards other sapient species - if not more, since AI could be superior to organics, and as such that much more dangerous.

* Relevant to politics, anyway. One may consider other primates, elephants, whales, and some birds and molluscs to be sapient as well, but they are hardly the focus of attention of most hate groups.
 
After watching some of the machine empire lets plays on youtube I've developed a question about Robomodding. Are some robomodding traits only available to organic civilizations, or will machine empires be able to unlock additional traits through later techs? Specifically, the Propoganda Machine trait shown in one of the images in the OP seems to be absent from early game robomodding for Machine Empires.
 
Wiz said:
Residence citizens can join factions, but the way a faction's power is calculated (which affects among other things, their vote share in 1.8 and how much influence you get if they're happy) a pop with Residence contributes only 20% of the power of a citizen pop. This means that if you have a faction with 10 citizen pops, and another faction with 10 residence pops, the first faction will have 80% of the overall power instead of 50%.
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please change it to what the tooltip implies, non-citizens (residents) should not be able to join factions. you're removing the ability to play an elitist authoritarian with multiple species in the empire with slaves and limiting gameplay to xenophobe playstyle if you want slaves

or at least fix the damn tooltip to clarify that all it does is lower their voting power and preventing them from having leaders...
 
tef said:
please change it to what the tooltip implies, non-citizens (residents) should not be able to join factions. you're removing the ability to play an elitist authoritarian with multiple species in the empire with slaves and limiting gameplay to xenophobe playstyle if you want slaves
or at least fix the damn tooltip to clarify that all it does is lower their voting power and preventing them from having leaders...
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It makes sense if you consider that even though Residents have reduced rights, they can still be politically active in the underground and/or support the agenda of full citizens. A real life example would probably be the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s USA.

I'm not sure if the tooltip truly warrants clarification, though I can see how the difference between "may not" and "will not" could be misleading. To clarify: the former, which is how the game currently words it, means the state will attempt to suppress, whereas only the latter would actually suggest the somewhat unrealistic total exclusion you seem to have expected here.
 
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