Stellaris Dev Diary #60: Psionics and The Shroud

[garbud]

I would think they would investigate anything that is somehow measurable.

This includes people developing strange abilities that actually can be observed and measured with scientific method, as a result out of evolutionary influences.

I think the point of psionics being locked to spiritualists is that they are the only ones who actually give any credit to the old storys about it existing in the first place. while materialists and other non-spiritualists treat psionics how we currently treat esp or future seeing or talking with the dead aka tall tales or pseudo science.

 

[Luzahn]

I think the point of psionics being locked to spiritualists is that they are the only ones who actually give any credit to the old storys about it existing in the first place. while materialists and other non-spiritualists treat psionics how we currently treat esp or future seeing or talking with the dead aka tall tales or pseudo science.

Sounds about right. I mean, take what we know about the Shroud. Your typical materialist, even if he's directly told "hey, there's this weird brain-realm we psychics can go to," is going to approach it conventionally; he'll try sending a drone in, or calculating its physical effect whenever a planet is Shrouded. From what we've seen, that's not really going to work. He may be able to confirm something is there, but he's never going to be able to explore it and communicate with the entities inside it in the way the Spiritualist does.

 

[aono]

Here, have further evidence that spiritualism =/= religion: due to ethics divergence, it is entirely possible to have many Spiritualist POPs in a non-Spiritualist, even Materialist empire.

Sorry, what should it prove? Soviet Union was materialist. Star Trek Federation - materialist. And you can have many spiritualist people here, it just not they who define politics.

So what you are telling me, is that you can have non-religious, spiritualists with militaristic tendencies that form a military republic rather than a theocracy?

No. I'm telling you that when you pick you government you pick an option from different aspects of your personality suggests. For simplicity, imagine that every empire takes a government that it's ethos says it (it's quite close, right?).
So Militarist Spiritualist Empire will take a Militarist option (so we can imagine something about militarist ethics) - put militarists to government; OR will take a Spiritualist option - put Spiritualists to government; OR take a generic option - put a somewbody who aren't Militarist or Spiritualist. That's why this governments named as "spiritualist governments", "militarist governments" or "generic governments" in game files. So no, if you have military republic, you have militarists with spiritualistic tendencies. And if you have theocracy in militaristic spiritualist empire, that when you got spiritualists with militaristic tendencies - when you take spiritualist government. Imagine you have two features - you're patriot and you're pacifist. Your country started a war. If you would hear your volunteer, take a rifle and going to war, will it be correct to say "some pacifist are willful to kill another people"? Or it's more about "you have to choose - who are you more, patriot or pacifist"?
All spiritualistic pops dislikes being resetteled in every government but theocratic_oligarchy (that's in files, you can check). You can mitigate such penalty with another ethics, but spiritualists will have penalty anyway.
All spiritualistic pops dislikes robots.
All spiritualistic pops dislikes leader enchancing.
You can have spiritualist pops AND policy allowing leader enchancing (or robots), but your spiritualists will be unhappy - and if they're in power and played fairly, they will never take that policies.

And no, we aren't trying to define spiritualism. The game and developers have already defined it.

I'm definitly agree. Look into \Steam\steamapps\common\Stellaris\common\governments\00_governments.txt, and check headline before theocracies.

He may be able to confirm something is there, but he's never going to be able to explore it and communicate with the entities inside it in the way the Spiritualist does.

Just a remark - he's never going to be able to explore it and communicate with the entities inside it in the way the psion does. Nothing bad with learning something by experience, you know. Sciencists takes LSD (and gives LSD another people), takes subjective experience and used it in research, because you can't actually proof subjective experience. Why psionic research should differ?

 

[Ysbaddaden]

So I'm going to have to fight against Kwisatz Haderach and an actual God Emperor? I hope I've modded my clone and gene armies well enough.

 

[TempusxX]

I can definitely just see that something goes wrong with exploring/contacting the shroud and the shroud ends up as a end game crisis like the other 3

 

[calen]

So the Shroud is the warp, isn't it.

 

[Luzahn]

So the Shroud is the warp, isn't is.

From context, it sounds like pre-Slaanesh Warp. Weird and dangerous but not inherently malicious.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

I can definitely just see that something goes wrong with exploring/contacting the shroud and the shroud ends up as a end game crisis like the other 3

Bad Things can happen without it being a Crisis. The Crises, well, they're kind of designed to threaten the entire galaxy. I would imagine that disasters borne of the Shroud are more personal in nature- something that can trash your empire, but not threaten everyone.

 

[Cruxador]

I'm pleasantly surprised at the depth of the ascension paths. I'm quite interested to see how the other two end up looking.

 

[Arkangilos]

Sorry, what should it prove? Soviet Union was materialist. Star Trek Federation - materialist. And you can have many spiritualist people here, it just not they who define politics.


No. I'm telling you that when you pick you government you pick an option from different aspects of your personality suggests. For simplicity, imagine that every empire takes a government that it's ethos says it (it's quite close, right?).
So Militarist Spiritualist Empire will take a Militarist option (so we can imagine something about militarist ethics) - put militarists to government; OR will take a Spiritualist option - put Spiritualists to government; OR take a generic option - put a somewbody who aren't Militarist or Spiritualist. That's why this governments named as "spiritualist governments", "militarist governments" or "generic governments" in game files. So no, if you have military republic, you have militarists with spiritualistic tendencies. And if you have theocracy in militaristic spiritualist empire, that when you got spiritualists with militaristic tendencies - when you take spiritualist government. Imagine you have two features - you're patriot and you're pacifist. Your country started a war. If you would hear your volunteer, take a rifle and going to war, will it be correct to say "some pacifist are willful to kill another people"? Or it's more about "you have to choose - who are you more, patriot or pacifist"?
All spiritualistic pops dislikes being resetteled in every government but theocratic_oligarchy (that's in files, you can check). You can mitigate such penalty with another ethics, but spiritualists will have penalty anyway.
All spiritualistic pops dislikes robots.
All spiritualistic pops dislikes leader enchancing.
You can have spiritualist pops AND policy allowing leader enchancing (or robots), but your spiritualists will be unhappy - and if they're in power and played fairly, they will never take that policies.


I'm definitly agree. Look into \Steam\steamapps\common\Stellaris\common\governments\00_governments.txt, and check headline before theocracies.


Just a remark - he's never going to be able to explore it and communicate with the entities inside it in the way the psion does. Nothing bad with learning something by experience, you know. Sciencists takes LSD (and gives LSD another people), takes subjective experience and used it in research, because you can't actually proof subjective experience. Why psionic research should differ?

So you are saying the devs are wrong, then? I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure at one point of them they said that spiritualism did not equal religion. And again, the descriptions say you are wrong.

Heck, I even showed you how it was their scientists that discovered what gave them their ethos.

 

[Meneliki]

3 things about this:

1) looks amazing. holy freakin crap.
2) Will similar event chains be tied to the other ascendancy paths, just as this one appears to be tied to psionics?
3) little prediction here - the end of this particular chain basically makes your empire hilariously OP for 50 years.... at the end of which, all your psychic pops either die(consumed by the shroud) or rebel against you somehow.. the idea being, "Ok, you're OP. You've got 50 years. End the game or you're in trouble." Makes me think of the Wizard's "Archon" spell in Diablo 3. Temporary rampage.

 

[GuyInTheSky]

I have to say that I haven't really played a Spiritual empire before. Just didn't appealed to me.

That is going to change.

 

[Razor Kotovsky]

I am so wet right now.

Hopefully supremacy and harmony will be as awesome.

 

[aono]

So you are saying the devs are wrong, then? I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure at one point of them they said that spiritualism did not equal religion. And again, the descriptions say you are wrong.

You looked into file I pointed? Theocracies are named as "Spiritualist Governments". And I can't see why are you trying to point about "sciencist found!". Of course, I'm not trying to say "religion is antiscience". Sure, science can be a way to spirituality, to the believe everything have a meaning.
I'm trying to say - if you don't read me before - that, by description given in game, spiritualism is a belief that every thing in universe exists with some grand meaning. Our live - saying spiritualist - is not pointless. Universe is not uncaring. "There are those think it behooves us to remember how tiny we are, how pointless our lives in this vast uncaring universe... What nonsense! The only truth we can ever know is that of our own existence. The universe - in all its apparent glory - is but a dream we all happen to share.", it's a description in-game, I'm not adding anything.
You're saying - "you can create an empire with non-theocratic government". Well. "This is a plutocratic form of oligarchy, ruled by a wealthy elite. A citizen's personal wealth translates directly into political power." - is it looks like common government to people who thinks like "There are those think it behooves us to remember how tiny we are, how pointless our lives in this vast uncaring universe... What nonsense!"? Or we can believe that somebody else defined such a government, and spiritualists just live there?

Or let's take another approach, not from ethic description, but from government description. I'm citing DESCRIPTIONS, right?
"This government is a spiritualistic form of autocracy, where the ruler is treated as a divine symbol. Organized religion is widely employed in support of the state apparatus." - it's Divine Mandate. So, of all autocracies - that's devs wrote! - Divine Mandate is an autocracy that most corresponds to spiritualism. It's not, let's say, Military Dictatorship - military dictatorship is a militaristic form of autocracy. That's what devs wrote.
Maybe with democracies something not this way? Let's see. "This government is a spiritualistic form of democracy, where a religious council supervises the democratic process and serves in an advisory role." So it's theocratic republic correspondes to spiritualistic point of view. And it's, well, theocratic.
But what about oligarches? Well... "This government is a spiritualistic form of oligarchy, where a divinely guided council made up of clergy controls the state. No division exists between the state and the dominant organized religion." That's an oligarchy, theocratic oligarchy from spiritualistic point of view. That's devs wrote, again, I did not add a word to cite. Check yourself.
If this is spiritualistic forms of government, every other is NOT spiritualistic, right? They're generic, militaristic, pacifistic, materialistic - but not spiritualistic. Yeah, spiritualistic pops can live in non-spiritualistic empire. They can even live alongside that... that... godless robots? soulless robots? why do they hate robots and personality boosters, by the way? And check in-game - they DO hate them. They are unhappy at least. Why would somebody who just believe there is something beyond this reality hate personality boosters?
But when they create a government that corresponds to their ethics, they create spiritualistic government. By, well, definition.

 

[safe-keeper]

Psionics? Hak hak hak.

Like where this is going. Not sure about things like psionics in a game like this, then again it was pretty cool in games like X-Com, so if it works, I'm all for it.

This is going to be the first DD I'm not going to read, though. Don't want stuff spoiled for me . But looking forward to this.

 

[Highlordelliot]

Question. Can I Nuke the Shroud?

 

[Malecord]

There's already evidence of psi-phenomenon and parapsychological events in the real world but that is swept under the rug by our largely Materialist academia.

Wut? Evidence? If there were any evidence we would know how to reproduce the phenomenons even without understanding how they work. You would teach children at school how they can do it themselves and then they would grow up obsessed with finding an explanation.Thus prompting research. As it happened for diseases, gravity, the season cycles and so on. That is my complaint with vanilla Stellaris. Science is plenty of unproved theories which are taken for true anyway. But this because they explain and even predict phenomenons that are observed in the real world. And I don't know any specie that reached the stars without a scientific approach to research.

Materialist vs. Spiritualist is probably the most clearly defined ethos extremes in my mind for this reason. A materialist would think the goals of a spiritualist is fantasy and a waste of time. A spiritualist would think the goals of a materialist is fleeting and a waste of time. Similar while simultaneously different from one another like most extremes. Fundamental ways of thinking that blocks you off from some things while opening up others. Which is why I advocate balance and why I agree with Saint that there must be some ways to make hybrids slightly. I'll be happy to see it done thoughtfully in mods though.

Ah... it's this science vs religion shit again.

It's not a scientists vs mujahideen argument. It's a FTL civ vs bronze age civ argument. The designer choose to make materialist play the dumb role but it could be all other ethos. I dunno. Imagine if Stellaris vanilla had as ultimate tech "sentient computer jump drive" and "sentient hunter killer droids" and those things were putting spiritualists at severe disadvantage. How could spiritualist be so damn stupid to not research those tech themselves? Just observe, make hypothesis, experiment, redo all times you need and then find out how it works. How can a civ with a "I won't even try" attitude reach the stars in the first place? Not to mention all the neutral ethos? What are they for not understanding both AIs and PSI? Galactic empires of disabled semi sentient?

I'm happy that Banks decouples the driver for those peculiarities from technology and puts them in society because it makes sense story wise. I never had an issue with the design principle that different ethos should offer different gameplay experience. It's purely a cosmetic canon consistency thing. For me it breaks the immersion when I find out that I deal with retarded space faring empires. And this regardless of what their ethos fetishes are.

 

[Princess Stabbity]

Unless I'm mistaken Asari were the first FTL species and were spiritualists on their planet for the longest time. They evolved on a planet heavily filled with the substance that gives them biotic powers by the Protheans which they considered Gods and built temples to them all around their planet. But yes, they went through ethos drift like the Vulcans in Star Trek did.

The thing is, their spiritualism evolved as the result of advanced aliens uplifting and gene-modding them under the guise of divine beings. Spiritualism wasn't the thing that made them biotic ^^ Everything they believed in was essentially a giant fabrication to cover up Protheans' meddling.

Admittedly the expansion will make it a bit harder for me to portray inherent biotic abilities in my Asari mod within the new mechanics governing psionics... Unless I decide to (and at this point I'm tempted to) treat biotics as something related to Field Manipulation tech rather than Psionics.
In fact, a lot of what Stellaris Psionics are (telepathy, higher dimensions, communing with spirits/energy beings) isn't exactly equivalent to what Biotics do, which is controlling mass effect fields with... brain electricity, facilitated by eezo-induced mutations and implants.

Huh... Actually, now that I wrote all that, I don't think Asari even are Psionic (in Stellaris terms). They can still exist in Stellaris, still be biotics (and get bonuses to physics, I guess) but still have to Transcend to develop actual Psionics.

YAY! ♪Solving design issues in a random conversation, la la la la♪

 

[Razor Kotovsky]

Huh... Actually, now that I wrote all that, I don't think Asari even are Psionic (in Stellaris terms).

Well, biotics is basically telekinesis but what about asari mindsecks? Not that it could manifest in any way in Stellaris on species-level, just a xenophile bonus?

(never played asari mods)

 

[Princess Stabbity]

Well, biotics is basically telekinesis but what about asari mindsecks? Not that it could manifest in any way in Stellaris on species-level, just a xenophile bonus?

(never played asari mods)

That's probably just a function of their aggressive nervous system (it does evoke neural parasite images in my head... but at least it's cute and blue!) and as far as I know has nothing to do with biotics. I'm pretty sure they could reproduce before Protheans came along and started poking them with probes and feeding them eezo candy.