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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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Materialists can get psionic technology if they have a scientist with the psionics trait (you can get the trait through exploration).
 
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Could it be possible to be able of combining endgame paths?

Like for example enabling an empire to either develop two of the paths at level one or reaching the second level of only the first path?

It would be cool to have a cyborg specie with advanced gene therapy abilities :D
 
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Caspoi said:
Materialists can get psionic technology if they have a scientist with the psionics trait (you can get the trait through exploration).
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^This. Although it's pretty rare and can still appear with skill levelup when they're just assisting research. Also, you can reverse engineer psi jumpdrive and the precognitive computer from debris, not sure about getting the psionic army from debris though.
 
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smjjames said:
^This. Although it's pretty rare and can still appear with skill levelup when they're just assisting research. Also, you can reverse engineer psi jumpdrive and the precognitive computer from debris, not sure about getting the psionic army from debris though.
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Thats exactly why i said i dont like the idea of having only a slim chance to trigger the only event chain that can make it possible. Other than that random level ups wont ever give the trait as it is locked to already having the psi tech OR the event chain. If they havent changed the game files since last i checked.
 
RgZera said:
Thats exactly why i said i dont like the idea of having only a slim chance to trigger the only event chain that can make it possible. Other than that random level ups wont ever give the trait as it is locked to already having the psi tech OR the event chain. If they havent changed the game files since last i checked.
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You can get the psionics trait from random level ups, I've had it happen recently too in 1.4. Still really rare though.

That said, we (well, us players anyway) don't yet know the details behind achieving said perks, and the fact that you can fluidly change your governments ethics in 1.5 helps.
 
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Just to further clarify: i prefer each ascension path to be a CHOICE not just an option. I want to be able to choose reliably in each game which path i want to take. And sure if each path is easier for some and harder for others thats fine BUT i hope if you work hard enough to unlock them you can always get whichever you want no matter your ethos. And praying for random events to trigger is by no means a reliable way and definitely no CHOICE of the player. Unless cyborg paths keep their racial traits and gain some new bonus to them LOL then screw psionic ascension, welcome my materialist, intelligent, synthetic and natural physicist species (but then spiritualist should not be able to get cyborg just as materialist cant get psi to make it a fair deal)

I have high hopes for the new ethos system too. Collectivist Fspiritualist and FIndividualist with anything are so broken right now. Materialist needs some love.
 
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I hope that the synth path does not merely change you primary species to synth but create a new synthetic version of your species.

So that they will be a difference between regular synth of your and alien empires and your species.
Would odd to conquer a planet with synth in it that are not considered xenos especially for xenophobes.

Additionnally I hope that the current laws concerning slavery and and robots are reversed or at least that it is easier to enslave organic (they are inferior afterall :D ) and harder to enslave robots (or synth) of your or another race making.
 
So... this may have been mentioned (but not in the first six pages), but you state that there are three paths, biological, spiritual, and synthetic. But then when describing the basics of the three paths, you switch "spiritual" to "psionic". So which one is it?
 
General Karthos said:
So... this may have been mentioned (but not in the first six pages), but you state that there are three paths, biological, spiritual, and synthetic. But then when describing the basics of the three paths, you switch "spiritual" to "psionic". So which one is it?
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Oversight maybe? Going by the earlier part of the DD, I guess he meant psionic and typed spiritual instead for whatever reason.
 
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General Karthos said:
So... this may have been mentioned (but not in the first six pages), but you state that there are three paths, biological, spiritual, and synthetic. But then when describing the basics of the three paths, you switch "spiritual" to "psionic". So which one is it?
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Psionics are a spiritualist discipline- you can unlock them without being a Spiritualist empire, but they are inherently "mystical" and operate in ways counterintuitive to Materialist ways of thinking.
 
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speaking of gene-modding pops. thats a subject ive never been 100% clear on. It would seem that you dont modify your race a as a whole, but you modify existing pops.. which means newly created pops are born with old traits..and.. yeah...

can someone clarify? Thanks
 
Well, kinda, even thou X-com merely glanced at the potential in the first one, and more or less removed it for the secon one. (the new games)
 
what about making work projects more real?
for an example a building requires 600 minerals and 1 year to build with simple rate of cost (50 per month) you have 400 minerals and +25 per month
following a classic Stellaris mechanic it needs 8 months waiting for resource and 1 year building
following a usual build we use in real world we build that immediately and 8 months later we have 200 more minerals to finish a job
or maybe if Stellaris is a game where all cost need to be paid first for all buildings then trash this idea
another thing is that please make genetic modifying a specific colony ship possible and changing planet preference possible without trait point because technically it costs zero but can't be done without at least 1 trait point
 
BlackUmbrellas said:
Psionics are a spiritualist discipline- you can unlock them without being a Spiritualist empire, but they are inherently "mystical" and operate in ways counterintuitive to Materialist ways of thinking.
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even though it's likely that the spirit choose psi and material choose nth but everyone else could go any and except that counter intuitive it's still possible
 
Hrm... I have a question. If you replace all your mods with robots and you install a robot leadership, do the robots still revolt?
 
tanny said:
what about making work projects more real?
for an example a building requires 600 minerals and 1 year to build with simple rate of cost (50 per month) you have 400 minerals and +25 per month
following a classic Stellaris mechanic it needs 8 months waiting for resource and 1 year building
following a usual build we use in real world we build that immediately and 8 months later we have 200 more minerals to finish a job
or maybe if Stellaris is a game where all cost need to be paid first for all buildings then trash this idea
another thing is that please make genetic modifying a specific colony ship possible and changing planet preference possible without trait point because technically it costs zero but can't be done without at least 1 trait point
Click to expand...


Along these lines, maybe make deficit spending a possibility. Maybe allow you to go negative to an amount equivalent to one year worth of your minerals and energy credits gain. Obviously, this would cost you in local policing and other areas, perhaps with a chance per month of a bad event firing where production or science are sabotaged?
 
Meneliki said:
speaking of gene-modding pops. thats a subject ive never been 100% clear on. It would seem that you dont modify your race a as a whole, but you modify existing pops.. which means newly created pops are born with old traits..and.. yeah...

can someone clarify? Thanks
Click to expand...

No, they become a subspecies. Meaning, if you mod half the Pops on a planet, both the new and the original pops will birth new ones with their respective traits.
 
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