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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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Anonymous@98 said:
Does this mean completing the ascension perks put us on the same level as ascended (unfallen) empires?
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Possibly, but I would point out that technological supremacy doesn't automatically imply spiritual ascension.
Instead of comparing ascension to the unbidden perhaps we should instead compare it to the Ancients and Ori from Stargate.

Which I think brings me to a point that some may disagree with, the potential application of religion in game.
 
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Winterwolf00 said:
Possibly, but I would point out that technological supremacy doesn't automatically imply spiritual ascension.
Instead of comparing ascension to the unbidden perhaps we should instead compare it to the Ancients and Ori from Stargate.

Which I think brings me to a point that some may disagree with, the potential application of religion in game.
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The first point I totally agree with. Having Ori like abilities will be pretty cool, I am sure that their will be POP bonuses but I don't know what they are just yet.

I don't think that they are going to add religion to the game because they have said that they want to keep that intentionally vague.
 
Wiz said:
Also about eating pops.
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About time too. Base food resources as a mere number was always too abstract for my taste, we need proper alien ranches. And purging was such a waste of nutrients. We need chain Alienhouse restaurants, and special gastrotourism buildings for happiness boosts. Can we sell excess slaves as food in exchange for energy credits? And we need a Cannibalism ethics trait because... well, just because. I'm hungry for more.
 
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tanny said:
Nope not like starcraft. The starcraft has hybrid. And the only thing it becomes bad is that it fall into bad guy. But we still can't. So we're in a different lore.
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What do you mean? the person wasnt talking about the hybrids they where talking about the Archons. The unit created when 2 high templars (protoss of vast psionic power... well more so for a protoss anyway) merge together to form a big blue energy ball with a figure inside of it.

and also
"the only thing it becomes bad is that it fall into bad guy. But we still can't. So we're in a different lore."

Weather or not we can become a bad guy doesnt matter to weather or not we are in a different lore. that has nothing to do with it, that we are not playing starcraft is what matters that we are in a differnet lore. and plenty of people play stellaris as bad guys so its not like its to far a stretch and impossible to become an evil ascended energy-esque empire (ooo that feasts of brain waves of other sentient life lol)
 
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I don't like those species paths. All three are rather "inward-looking" - 'we must adapt ourselfes the the world around us'

This will certainly work for aliens, but it does not work for the only confirmed sapient species - us. Whe are "outward-looking" - 'the world around us must bow to our demands'.

When we found a swamp we did not grow webbed feet, we got rid of the swamp. The universe is just another swamp for us to dry up.
 
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klingonadmiral said:
I don't like those species paths. All three are rather "inward-looking" - 'we must adapt ourselfes the the world around us'

This will certainly work for aliens, but it does not work for the only confirmed sapient species - us. Whe are "outward-looking" - 'the world around us must bow to our demands'.

When we found a swamp we did not grow webbed feet, we got rid of the swamp. The universe is just another swamp for us to dry up.
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That's what the World Shaper and presumably many other of the 20+ perks are for. The species ascension paths we've seen so far comprise only 6 perks total. Given that there's 8 perk slots available you can conceivably max out without ever touching any of them.
 
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klingonadmiral said:
I don't like those species paths. All three are rather "inward-looking" - 'we must adapt ourselfes the the world around us'

This will certainly work for aliens, but it does not work for the only confirmed sapient species - us. Whe are "outward-looking" - 'the world around us must bow to our demands'.

When we found a swamp we did not grow webbed feet, we got rid of the swamp. The universe is just another swamp for us to dry up.
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It is because we don't have presently the technology to adapt ourselfs. But even without, the transhumanist ideology exist, and it is clearly a "inward looking", with the hopes we will have the technology in this century. So thoses paths species have perfectly there place in the game, the technology to adapt the species to their environnement are already present (gene mod). Futhermore, the ascend path for the "outward-looking" exist equally.
 
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Princess Stabbity said:
That's what the World Shaper and presumably many other of the 20+ perks are for. The species ascension paths we've seen so far comprise only 6 perks total. Given that there's 8 perk slots available you can conceivably max out without ever touching any of them.
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True, but still, the "species endgame" perks seem to be somewhat singled out.

I want something for the stubborn audacity (or audacious stubbornness) to remain unchanged in the face of a hostile galaxy. Victors don't confine to the rules of the universe, they make the universe confine to their rules.
 
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BlackUmbrellas said:
Why do you think they're bioengineered? Do we have significant evidence that the Prethoryn are not simply a much more aggressive form of space-life like the Tiyanki or the Amoeba?
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They pilot living ships similar to the one you find crashed as an anomaly. They are also sentient.
 
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klingonadmiral said:
True, but still, the "species endgame" perks seem to be somewhat singled out.

I want something for the stubborn audacity (or audacious stubbornness) to remain unchanged in the face of a hostile galaxy. Victors don't confine to the rules of the universe, they make the universe confine to their rules.
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They are called SPECIES ASCENSIONS! They are about how your species itself Ascending, if they just stay the same and be stubborn the species isn't changing.
 
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klingonadmiral said:
True, but still, the "species endgame" perks seem to be somewhat singled out.

I want something for the stubborn audacity (or audacious stubbornness) to remain unchanged in the face of a hostile galaxy. Victors don't confine to the rules of the universe, they make the universe confine to their rules.
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Then just don't ascend. It is that simple.
 
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TempusxX said:
anyone as far as I know can get Psionics its just that Spiritualists are much more attuned to psionics than the others and as mentioned more likely to get psionics before the others
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Nope, and thats what im afraid of. Materialist cant get psionic stuff under any circumstances. Only exception is an event chain but its not reliable at all. What i want is to have a fanatic materialist empire built entirely around science, that in the end can ascend too. That is basically the stargate Lanteans that broke into 2 subfactions. The materialist Ancients and the spiritualist Ori both of which ascended in the end.

All the rest is fine as they only have less chance to get psi stuff BUT not the 0 multiplier of materialists :(

And its fine because i can mod it to suit my needs but i really prefer touching as few of the original files as possible.

But as i see it anyone can do gene modding and anyone can do cyborg stuff except for spiritualist who would get some bad modifiers (more of a bug to be hateful towards themselves) BUT ascension would be almost exclusively for spiritualists while the other would have a very low chance of rolling the required tech and even then its probably late game AND materialist would basically have 0 chance of ever obtaining it. And people could argue it makes most sense for spiritualist beings but hey maybe materialists figure out the technology to convert people into energy beings which is more believable to me than meditating hard turns you into energy, and EVEN if it did it would be most likely an explosion LOL

Maybe i watched too much stargate but the most spiritualist race is the nox who have psichic powers, seemingly dont age and they can resurrect their dead anyway. They focused on development of their abilities whereas the ancients figured out how to ascend through technology.

In any case giving more options no matter what ethos you have is a good idea. I dont want spiritualist to be forced to ascend or materialists to be forced to turn into cyborgs. In fact giving each ethos more variations of playstyle is what we should aim for. So far it was kind of a must to spam synths if you wanted to get rid of food and get the most production out of your pops. A fanatic materialist with intelligent trait still falls short against a synth with share the burden (after nerf to share the burden) in science and totally gets laughed at in every other field other than food. Not to mention bigger planets grow a lot slower than synths would at their constant rate. Also buffs to energy always pay off and buffs to food have a limit of usefulness. Same with fanatic spiritualist being forced to use genetic modification to colonise all planets.
 
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Anonymous@98 said:
iirc, in stargate, the materialists ascended first, no?
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yes the ancients were materialists and they figured out how to ascend just before a plague wiped out their whole race. The ones that couldnt ascend died... The ori probably ascended around the same time or later since they do not possess the same power the ancients have and thats why they are angry little kids spreading disgusting religion promising ascension to mortals and harnessing them for faith .... But outside of known races probably many have ascended before. They call the collective, of ascended beings who restrict the interaction with the "real" world, the Others. In stargate its rather easy to ascend for some like Daniel Jackson who was a human and could do it after a short time (with help from Oma). On the other hand the asgard 100000+ year old civilisation only had a few members who could and the others died from genetic degeneration ... very sad indeed.
 
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