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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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Greyhound_Gen. said:
The only thing I'm a little disappointed by is the fact that the endgame perks are mutually exclusive. I'd really like to create a species that uses both advanced gene-modding and cybernetics (even if it means they would be unable to master either as well as a species that had focused on one branch exclusively).
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Yes, I'd greatly prefer this as well. Not only would it allow a greater level of customization and sensible narrative choice, it would also lead to greater diversity among "endgame empires".

If Ascension Paths have two levels, why not allow a culture to combine any two level 1's, at the expense of locking the level 2?
  • Psi+Psi: Psionic Ascension
  • Psi+Cyber: Mass Effect
  • Cyber+Cyber: Brain Uploads
  • Cyber+Gene: Cyberpunk
  • Gene+Gene: X-Men
  • Gene+Psi: Stranger Things
 
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Rubido said:
Can it be, that this whole eating pops thing can eventually lead to parasite/symbiosis mechanics?
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He tweeted about the consumption and nutering of pops over twitter, which I found amusing. I suspect it'll be more related to managing enslavement and purging per species rather than anything like that. That would be cool though!
 
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Rubido said:
Just thinking



Can it be, that this whole eating pops thing can eventually lead to parasite/symbiosis mechanics?
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From what we know from the twitter-based teasers, there are at least two mechanisms for eating POP units- one "processes" them ala a Purge. I'm hoping the other is more like "domestication" and lets you farm them long-term.
 
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You are really coming through on this update -- I don't think I'm alone in saying that this is exactly in line with a lot of suggestions on the list, combining more endgame goals, more civ unique aspects, and pop alteration changes.
 
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Wiz said:
Because without paid expansions we will not be able to continue developing Stellaris.
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OK, deal. Give us paid expansions, cosmetic DLCs, history packs or whatever you want, but make this game the better you can. There are very good mods out there and a good community to support this new "franchise" and that´s a really important task, isn´t it?. You made that awesome rome mod back in the day, so you know what I am talking, right? (just tried Reign of the Ancients these christmas holidays). And I think these new steps (ascension perks, unity, factions,... ) are pointing into a really good direction. And horizon signal and leviathans/war in heaven were also reeeeally good features, by the way.

Just one more thing. This is Banks. We could have orbitals, ascension, etc. Thats right. But Stellaris also needs a bit of Azad. ;)
 
Wiz said:
You're not required to go down any of these paths, nor will every AI-controlled empire do so.
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Well, you are not required to upgrade to advanced government form as well, because game does not force you to do so. But that doesn't mean that every player would not do that.
We can easily end in a Blizzard's situation, when they constantly tried to make people to use Swarm Hosts and Battlecruisers in Starcraft 2. For now they try to buff them but in worse case we could end like Relic, while it was still alive, and balancing Dawn of War. People spammed Possessed Marines and Obliterators, so they started to limit their numbers per game. Each time some unit or strategy showed to be very effective, they axed or forced people to stop using it in the most crude way - forbid, limit, deny etc. Parado faced same story with EUIV where everyone took Quantity and Administrative ideas.
 
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Pyramid_Head said:
Well, you are not required to upgrade to advanced government form as well, because game does not force you to do so. But that doesn't mean that every player would not do that.
We can easily end in a Blizzard's situation, when they constantly tried to make people to use Swarm Hosts and Battlecruisers in Starcraft 2. For now they try to buff them but in worse case we could end like Relic, while it was still alive, and balancing Dawn of War. People spammed Possessed Marines and Obliterators, so they started to limit their numbers per game. Each time some unit or strategy showed to be very effective, they axed or forced people to stop using it in the most crude way - forbid, limit, deny etc. Parado faced same story with EUIV where everyone took Quantity and Administrative ideas.
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Seeing as you don't transform on a click of button and it is followed by many events, going for ascension is a risky move. Not to mention that it may come with its own downsides.
Additionally, they did say that they will be adding more ascension perks and there is a limit to how many Perks you can have. It's also possible that you'd want these other perks besides ascension ones. By abandoning to focus on ascension, one could possibly have a stronger overall Empire.

In other words, it all depends on other perks and how they will be balanced. If there are enough good ones (like building a ringworld and other mega structures), it will be a good alternative to these three ascensions.
 
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Pyramid_Head said:
Well, you are not required to upgrade to advanced government form as well, because game does not force you to do so. But that doesn't mean that every player would not do that.
We can easily end in a Blizzard's situation, when they constantly tried to make people to use Swarm Hosts and Battlecruisers in Starcraft 2. For now they try to buff them but in worse case we could end like Relic, while it was still alive, and balancing Dawn of War. People spammed Possessed Marines and Obliterators, so they started to limit their numbers per game. Each time some unit or strategy showed to be very effective, they axed or forced people to stop using it in the most crude way - forbid, limit, deny etc. Parado faced same story with EUIV where everyone took Quantity and Administrative ideas.
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Considering there'll be more than 20 ascension perks, perhaps it'll end up being that having the species perks will not be the best idea for everyone. More likely it'll be that the benefits in other places will be more tantalizing than the species-specific perks.
 
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Nyrael said:
Seeing as you don't transform on a click of button and it is followed by many events, going for ascension is a risky move. Not to mention that it may come with its own downsides.
Additionally, they did say that they will be adding more ascension perks and there is a limit to how many Perks you can have. It's also possible that you'd want these other perks besides ascension ones. By abandoning to focus on ascension, one could possibly have a stronger overall Empire.

In other words, it all depends on other perks and how they will be balanced. If there are enough good ones (like building a ringworld and other mega structures), it will be a good alternative to these three ascensions.
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EUIIV had westernization with ONLY negative effects for years. It never stopped anyone from doing it. With time people will just know for what they will prepare. If there will be uprisings then everyone ill just build more armies as countermeasure etc.
 
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Wiz said:
The paths are mutually exclusive, and once you start heading down one of them, the other two are locked off.
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I don't like this at all. Everything else is fantastic but all the mutually exclusive stuff is kind of silly. The psychic side maybe, but there doesn't seem any logical reason that cybernetics wouldn't be available to everyone and much earlier in the tech tree. I've always wanted leader portraits where higher tech civs get progressively more enhanced...
 
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Czaristan said:
I don't like this at all. Everything else is fantastic but all the mutually exclusive stuff is kind of silly. The psychic side maybe, but there doesn't seem any logical reason that cybernetics wouldn't be available to everyone and much earlier in the tech tree. I've always wanted leader portraits where higher tech civs get progressively more enhanced...
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Thinking about it, there may be mileage in this argument. I can see why you wouldn't want people to get the highest level of any two trees, but why not let us roleplay our desires and let us take ONLY two from the three trees? That would probably expand on our ability to roleplay our species even further.
 
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I like what I've been reading about the Banks update so-far. Seems like it will be te start of Stellaris hitting its true potential. Also, I'm fine with the DLC being paid. Seems like a lot of work will be going into this update, and I pay for quality.

I hope the portraits change based on the paths you choose do go down. And I hope that your multi-species empire (if you chose to go down that path) will have some instability because many will disagree with that choice (unless you converted them with ethics divergence).
 
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Pyramid_Head said:
EUIIV had westernization with ONLY negative effects for years. It never stopped anyone from doing it. With time people will just know for what they will prepare. If there will be uprisings then everyone ill just build more armies as countermeasure etc.
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Westernization was a beneficial thing and it had no actual alternative, nor did it lock anything that's cool. Strategically it may not be the best idea, but strategy doesn't matter that much to being cool. If there was something like Modernization, then people would be split between those.

Here your alternative might be "Ability to build Ringworlds", "Ability to mind-control half of the Galaxy", etc. Going for ascension will lock some out cool things, things you yourself might prefer.

scaper12123 said:
Thinking about it, there may be mileage in this argument. I can see why you wouldn't want people to get the highest level of any two trees, but why not let us roleplay our desires and let us take ONLY two from the three trees? That would probably expand on our ability to roleplay our species even further.
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I think I already know what the Devs will say: it's easy to mod, so mod it. It will lock out achievements, but since this makes the game easier that would be as desired.
 
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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.
Click to expand...

This makes me wonder: instead of turning into an (full-pledged) Unbidden, are Psionics getting an ability to summon them as allies instead?
 
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