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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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Isn't this the perfect time to also include some form of Spying or infiltration?
I think it'd be much more interesting to have to spy on our neighbors in order to figure out army size, science focus, etc. As well as These new additions would make it so we have more information to obtain.
I do however understand that making a good spy-system is really hard (EUIV has a fairly bad one..) But it'd be nice and well, fun.
 
FPS_chessmaster said:
Will we be getting new synth and cyborg portraits for different species? Like robo plants? Cyber Cats?
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Ideally each species will have slightly modified portraits representing the 3 paths or even each step in the path (for example a normal version, one as a cyborg and one as synth, depending how far you got with that ascension path)
Or at least give modders the option to change the portrait depending on the ascension perks even when you do not implement it yourself.
 
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Ixal said:
Ideally each species will have slightly modified portraits representing the 3 paths or even each step in the path (for example a normal version, one as a cyborg and one as synth, depending how far you got with that ascension path)
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Well, that's way too much work with Stellaris portrait system, there's already dozens of them and always more to come. I expect a few phenotype/posture based portraits at best, unless changes to existing portraits will be minimal.
 
Ixal said:
Ideally each species will have slightly modified portraits representing the 3 paths or even each step in the path (for example a normal version, one as a cyborg and one as synth, depending how far you got with that ascension path)
Or at least give modders the option to change the portrait depending on the ascension perks even when you do not implement it yourself.
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That should be relatively easy actually. It was mentioned somewhere there would be events associated with the species ones implying there is a way to differentiate empires based on path. You would just tie an event to one of the flags and have it trigger once that changes the species portrait. Easy peasy if you can art which I cant :(
 
Ixal said:
Ideally each species will have slightly modified portraits representing the 3 paths or even each step in the path (for example a normal version, one as a cyborg and one as synth, depending how far you got with that ascension path)
Or at least give modders the option to change the portrait depending on the ascension perks even when you do not implement it yourself.
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Honestly I don't think all the Ascension paths should have portrait mods.

From what we know, the Genetics path in particular is less about directing your species in one direction and more about making genetic modification for specialized sub-species way, way easier- and I don't know about you, but that seems like an idea counter to all your POPs having the same visual changes.

Hell, the Synthetics path could well just replace your POPs with a recolour of robot.

For that matter, I kind of doubt the Psionics path will turn your population into energy beings- and glowing eyes just seem tacky. Not to mention redundant for a number of species.
 
Milten said:
Well, that's way too much work with Stellaris portrait system, there's already dozens of them and always more to come. I expect a few phenotype/posture based portraits at best, unless changes to existing portraits will be minimal.
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Could possibly address it the same way clothing currently functions - an additional layer that sits on top of the portrait. There are a number of generic doodads that could be added to standard portraits fairly easily that way, I'd wager.

Ixal said:
I would find that rather boring as then so many species would look the same during the endgame. And I assume you still need to differentiate between them as they keep their traits (or?).
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Take the 1950s B Movie route: spray paint them all silver and call it a day. :p
 
Ixal said:
I would find that rather boring as then so many species would look the same during the endgame. And I assume you still need to differentiate between them as they keep their traits (or?).
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We don't have a lot of details, I'll admit. Considering that this seems like a "canonized" version of the all-synth playstyle some people undertake, I think it could be conceivable that you get the traits of Synthetics- i.e., immune to radiation, 100% habitability across the board, a massive bonus to all forms of production minus food, and immortality- at the cost of your original traits.

As for how common that becomes... well, that depends how the AI is coded to interact with Ascension Perks. They might only very rarely go after them, or be restricted to certain AI personalities.
 
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General Retreat said:
Could possibly address it the same way clothing currently functions - an additional layer that sits on top of the portrait. There are a number of generic doodads that could be added to standard portraits fairly easily that way, I'd wager.
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Exactly. You wouldnt need completely different portraits but just some clothes. And even whem you do a new portray you can simply do a retexture of the basic one instead of drawing a completely new one. A new Photoshop layer with some implants/mutations/glowing psi things so to speak.
 
BlackUmbrellas said:
From what we know, the Genetics path in particular is less about directing your species in one direction and more about making genetic modification for specialized sub-species way, way easier- and I don't know about you, but that seems like an idea counter to all your POPs having the same visual changes.
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I don't think it's exactly like that. First step in each path seems to just add flat bonuses in certain areas (at least juding by genetic engineers path), however second step seems to be much more than that. If synths get immortality and presumably 100% habitability I expect others to be just as good.
 
Milten said:
I don't think it's exactly like that. First step in each path seems to just add flat bonuses in certain areas (at least juding by genetic engineers path), however second step seems to be much more than that. If synths get immortality and presumably 100% habitability I expect others to be just as good.
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I expect them to be different things- I think Ascension Perks would be radically more interesting if they represented divergent paths rather than fully equivalent ones.
 
BlackUmbrellas said:
I think it could be conceivable that you get the traits of Synthetics- i.e., immune to radiation, 100% habitability across the board, a massive bonus to all forms of production minus food, and immortality- at the cost of your original traits.
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That would make sense for physical traits but not for social ones like decadence
hedonism_bot___los_angeles_lakers_by_sprgrafx-d7t7njj.jpg


Besides I cant imagine that an ascension will rob you of your species identity. It would also be hard to balance compared to genetics which lets you add even more traits.
 
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Ixal said:
That would make sense for physical traits but not for social ones like decadence
http://orig04.deviantart.net/8720/f...___los_angeles_lakers_by_sprgrafx-d7t7njj.jpg

Besides I cant imagine that an ascension will rob you of your species identity. It would also be hard to balance compared to genetics which lets you add even more traits.
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Decadent has always been more or less the odd-trait-out- it's, as far as I can remember, the only one that a biological justification feels shaky for (although arguments can still be made).

As for "robbing you of your species identity", well... I imagine it'll give your particular brand of (presumably) AI-Rebellion-immune Synths a special name. But really- the whole point is to abandon your stupid inferior squishy forms and become perfect, immortal machines... like m- sorry. But yeah, the Synth traits are very, very powerful; contrasting those with increased freedom to mix-and-match-and-modify traits for Genetics seems fair.
 
Excellent additions.

Would you consider changing the mutual exclusives to highly unlikely incompatible? (Ergo that it would be very difficult, but possible to have them like the aliens in Xcom?)
 
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