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Stellaris Dev Diary #63: Synthetic and Biological Ascension

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris dev diary. This week we'll be talking about Ascension again, specifically the Synthetic and Biological Ascension Paths. In dev diary #60 we talked about the Psionic Ascension Path and the associated Shroud. The Shroud was a fairly major mechanical addition to the game, which we felt was needed as Psionics lacked any such mechanic associated with them, unlike the other two. For this reason, the Biological and Synthetic Ascension Paths do not have the same degree of new mechanics associated with them, but rather focus on enhancing the existing mechanics (Genemodding and Robots) that they are tied to.

The Synthetic Ascension Path focuses on abandoning your frail biological forms for that of a perfect machine. The first step, the Flesh is Weak, requires the Droids technology and allows you to modify your entire population through a special project, turning them into cyborgs. This gives them an immediate +20% boost to habitability, as well as bonuses to mineral production and army damage, and also makes any leaders generated from those species have the Cyborg trait granting an additional +40 years of lifespan.
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The next step, Synthetic Evolution, requires the ability to build Synths, and allows you to upgrade your cyborg population into fully mechanical forms, finally abandoning the frailty of flesh for the surety of synthetics. When it is complete, you will become a fully robotic empire, with a robotic primary species. Your population will benefit from all the advantages normally conferred to Synths in production and research, and all your leaders will be immortal, able to be killed only in battle or through events. You will also naturally no longer require Food for your synthetic population, instead being replaced by an Energy maintenance similar to regular Synths. You will also be able to name your new, gloriously post-biological people.
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The Biological Ascension Path focuses on mastery of DNA and evolution. The first step, Engineered Evolution, requires the Gene Tailoring technology and grants a major reduction to the cost and time required to genetically modify species, gives you +2 trait points, and also unlocks the ability to research the Gene Seed Purification technology which is otherwise unavailable (it can still be researched as normal for those who do not have the Utopia expansion), allowing recruitment of Gene Warriors.
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The next step, Evolutionary Mastery requires the Targeted Gene Expressions technology. It grants an additional +3 trait points, a further reduction in time and cost of genemodding, and unlocks the ability to research the Genetic Resequencing technology, which once researched unlocks Advanced Genemodding. With Advanced Genemodding you will be able to add negative traits and remove positive traits, allowing you to completely reshape species at your whim. It also unlocks five new traits that are exclusively available to the Biological Ascension Path:
Robust: Upgrades from Extremely Adaptable, adds +30% habitability and an extra +30 years of lifespan.
Fertile: Upgrades from Rapid Breeders, gives -30% growth time and +5% happiness
Erudite: Upgrades from Intelligent, gives +20% science production and +1 leader skill levels.
Delicious: Makes the species delicious and nutritious, granting +100% food yield from Processing and Livestock.
Nerve Stapled: Removes the ability of the species to feel happiness or sadness. Happiness is disabled and Food/Mineral production increased, but adds major penalties to other resource production.
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Additionally, Advanced Genemodding allows for the ability for non-Hive Mind empires to remove the Hive-Minded trait from Pops and for Hive Minds to add it to Pops, as mentioned in dev diary #62.

That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking a variety of smaller features coming in the Banks update, including the ability to terraform Mars.
 
The Eldar started down Psionic and then stagnated.

I'm not sure the Eldar stagnated so much as totally messed up by contacting the wrong Shroud being. Or even the Worm that Waits.

Humanity fractured into a thousand small empires, some of which started on Psi.

Then the Emperor committed his Imperium to the Biological path and conquered the lesser empires, annexing their psi-latent POPs.

As for humanity, I agree that they're on a mixture of paths, including the psi driven ones, and the Mechanicus who started venturing down the Machine path (for the Flesh is Weak)

I would say that the Imperium might actually not be a single true Empire, but more of a network of vassals and tributaries with their own differing natures under the overlordship of Terra. (With places like Badab, or Ultramar being examples of vassals)

The Tau are just starting on Synthetic.

The Tau could also be biological, with their castes being subspecies. I'm not sure that the Tau have much in the way of prosthesis or other technological augmentation.
 
Both the emperor and the Old Ones would have arguably taken both the biological and psionic path.

I always thought the emperor was forced to choose his psionic path but personaly would have prefered the biological one.



Though btw with roughly 1 million worlds colonized by humans...the unity gain will be near to zero. Srsly such a construct would never be truly united and following together just one path thats why the empire is so strict with heretics with this brutality they can at least keep a few hundred thousand worlds under control.
 
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Hello everyone , i'm a big big fan of stellaris , I'm italian, i wish to thank you because
You didn't translate The interface of The game in italian language ( Kidding :) ) I Was reading 63th diary , The biological ascension part it's little poor in my opinion and I Think that its a good idea insert life creation as maximum perk . You Could use existing species
As model or you could the creation hibrid species selecting traits as you like (for the ibrids species requests more work and new portraits) like the game Spore. Thanks a lot for the fabolous work done.
 
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I'm curious if we will be able to go down the psionic path, dabble in it so to speak, if we decide on going Biological. It's not far fetched that one might be able to genemod psionic potential into a population. (Plus, if Army attachments are the same I can make Gene warriors with the Psionic Warrior attachment, Librarians anyone? :D All I can see in my mind when I make that combo are badass warriors that wield psionic powered melee weapons!)
 
I'm curious if we will be able to go down the psionic path, dabble in it so to speak, if we decide on going Biological. It's not far fetched that one might be able to genemod psionic potential into a population. (Plus, if Army attachments are the same I can make Gene warriors with the Psionic Warrior attachment, Librarians anyone? :D All I can see in my mind when I make that combo are badass warriors that wield psionic powered melee weapons!)

If you take the first ascension peak of any 3 paths. You will be automatic locked from taking a second path. That is how I understand Utopia 1.5 will work barring any major change between now and then.
 
I think the synthetic ascension should have some new synthetics portraits to choose for your post-biologic specie (standarts synthetics would continue using the old portrait), ascended synthetics should have slightly different productions buffs of the standart syntethics because i think the synthetic tech and standarts synthetics pops should have use late game in materialist empires (ascended synthetics have slightly better research production bonus and standart synthetcis have slightly better energy or mineral production bonus maybe?) and should have a tech for the ascended synthetics grow pops automatically.
With these changes I think the synthetic ascension would be very fun.
 
As for humanity, I agree that they're on a mixture of paths, including the psi driven ones, and the Mechanicus who started venturing down the Machine path (for the Flesh is Weak)

I would say that the Imperium might actually not be a single true Empire, but more of a network of vassals and tributaries with their own differing natures under the overlordship of Terra. (With places like Badab, or Ultramar being examples of vassals)



The Tau could also be biological, with their castes being subspecies. I'm not sure that the Tau have much in the way of prosthesis or other technological augmentation.

I don't think the game engine really allows for a single Empire to be that large. And keep in mind that after Slaanesh's warp storms humanity's colonies were isolated from one another, with only a few multi-system polities (like Ultramar).

The Tau are the only species actively researching artificial intelligence. I could say it was Syncretic Evolution but the Earth Caste are more artisans and engineers than manual labor.
 
Hello everyone , i'm a big big fan of stellaris , I'm italian, i wish to thank you because
You didn't translate The interface of The game in italian language ( Kidding :) ) I Was reading 63th diary , The biological ascension part it's little poor in my opinion and I Think that its a good idea insert life creation as maximum perk . You Could use existing species
As model or you could the creation hibrid species selecting traits as you like (for the ibrids species requests more work and new portraits) like the game Spore. Thanks a lot for the fabolous work done.

While I on the contrary think that the biological ascension path is rather powerful,
I do agree that it would be awesome to even change names AND PHENOTYPES aka pictures.

The gene modding would just follow up the principle of equal matter conversion after transforming the DNA causing a metamorphosis.
No idea if someone could "survive" this or if it It would be more like a genocide as the pops actually dying off and their bodys just are giving birth to your new creations.
 
For me it seems that the power of the biological way depends on how much micro-managing you are willing to invest.
If you just modify all pops of your species once, then it is weak as you can´t include all traits to excel at every task.
The more you are willing to split your species into subspecies and specialize your pops/planets the more you get out of it.

Has anyone gone that way? I imagine it must be horrific if you haven´t your planets specialized and allowed migration (always the wrong pop on a tile). How does the sector AI handle it?
 
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For me it seems that the power of the biological way depends on how much micro-managing you are willing to invest.
If you just modify all pops of your species once, then it is weak as you can´t include all traits to excel at every task.
The more you are willing to split your species into subspecies and specialize your pops/planets the more you get out of it.

Has anyone gone that way? I imagine it must be horrific if you haven´t your planets specialized and allowed migration (always the wrong pop on a tile). How does the sector AI handle it?

Yes the micro will be insane. I think you realy have to plan ahead to pull it off without wanting to kill yourself at some point.

But yes if you surive the micro hell the biologial ascension path is the most powerful by a far margin I am sure of that.
 
PSI-techs will be exclusive to the psychic path, some Gene-techs will be bio path only.
Are their any techs that are synth path only?

It would feels right to me, that the synth-tech should only be research-able if you have chosen "the Flesh is weak". I know that would deny anyone, except the synth path followers, the ability to build synths.
 
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Are their any techs that are synth path only?
They definitely should have something
It would feels right to me, that the synth-tech should only be research-able if you have chosen "the Flesh is weak". I know that would deny anyone, except the synth path followers, the ability to build synths.
but this is not the way. It's about manipulating your organic population, regular synths belong to all materialists, not only for those which flesh is weak. I'd rather see converted synths be different in some ways from regular ones.
 
I don't normally comment on anything online, but I literally just made this account to say that these upcoming changes to Stellaris look absolutely fantastic, keep up the good work guys!
 
They definitely should have something

but this is not the way. It's about manipulating your organic population, regular synths belong to all materialists, not only for those which flesh is weak. I'd rather see converted synths be different in some ways from regular ones.
In short synth mkII. But in what way should they differ? The the boni that they have are already high and shouldn´t be raised too much. Even an increase of +5% is maybe too much, and would make the bio path too weak, looking how much work it is to get a little more efficient with the bio path.

Btw the cyborg trait gives a bonus to army damage, is that lost when converting to synth? Or will the defense and offensive armies, that a synth empire can build, have better stats than the best droid armies you can build atm?

As for the synth portrait for the species. In the workshop are many portrait mods available. I know that the priority for the portraits is low and there is more important work to do, but i´m still asking me if it is really that difficult to create the portraits?
 
In short synth mkII. But in what way should they differ? The the boni that they have are already high and shouldn´t be raised too much. Even an increase of +5% is maybe too much, and would make the bio path too weak, looking how much work it is to get a little more efficient with the bio path.
Balance theorycraft was never my strong side, but for starter they could "breed" instead of being built like regular synths.
 
Perhaps you missed detail in that dev diary. Your empire overall does not have some abstract level of attraction for each that is universal to all pops and they'll all share it - the attraction across your empire shown in the screenshots is aggregate of the attraction to them by different pops

You're wrong. The screen shot they showed of the attractiveness of the Authoritarian faction had four different empire wide affects that either add or reduce the attractiveness of Authoritarianism. These aren't aggregate from the individual populations response to your empire taking Domination Traditions. Some affects, like being in an autocratic government or your empire having Authoritarian Ethos, will create a set amount of Ethos attraction that guaranty's a certain percentage of your population will shift towards that ethic.

Nothing in the dev diary says that they've removed the concept of ethics divergence - in particular, nothing says they've removed conformist or its counterpart.

They either removed it, or revamped it so heavily that it is no longer applicable to your complaints and no longer suitably described by the term Divergence. Either way you're splitting hairs here. Ethics divergence used to operate either by shifting your population either towards your empire ethos, or away in a random direction, thus the use of the term divergence. Your strategy was 'mind control lazers' 'unity temples' and 're-education plants.' In the long term, you converted deviant populations to your own ethos and you stopped having problems with them. You still seem to think this is how it will operate despite presumably having read the explanation that it no longer will operate that way.

As of Utopia what happens is that your populations will shift ethos to reach a mean close to the attractiveness stats that you can see on the page I linked. This mean is reached by a combination of local affects AND empire wide affects and populations affected by these local affects will also have a higher percentage chance of being the ones that shift into that ethos to bring you up to the mean. Mind control lazers may still be a thing, but if they do anything, it's going to be a bonus to the attractiveness of your empire's ethos, it won't be flipping the switch on some populations so that their ethos shift towards you instead of randomly away from you.

You presume I aim to deal with it by purging. I'm looking through individuals to see what their ethos are, figure out why they're different, determine if this planet needs attention in that regard such as symbol of unity or orbital mind control laser, or if I just need to give them a bit more time because it's not been very long. Things are greatly obscured with all the synths being the same, regardless of who created them, except in some back-end factors you don't see.

If you're looking through individuals anyway, no information is obscured and the portrait picture gives no additional information, likewise if you're looking at individuals anyway, the race of their creators provides no information regarding the use of an orbital mind control laser or a symbol of unity. Really, that kind of information is only useful if you're making off the cuff judgements based on racial origin. And if you are making off the cuff judgements based on racial origin, you're in for an even bigger disappointment. Take another look at that most recent screen shot of the Commonwealth of Man. Those fanatically militaristic humans only have an ethos attraction to militarism that's just over 40%. If you conquer the commonwealth, see a human, and assuming he's militaristic you will be wrong almost 60% of the time.

And all of this is predicated on the assumption that the AI will even regularly take Synthetic Ascension as a path. Because the benefits of Synthetic Ascension are a bit more oblique in regards to the standard strategy for play. And given that maximizing the benefits of Synthetic Ascension requires long term planning. And given the AI is bad at both dramatic shifts in strategy mid game AND long term planning, Synthetic Ascension, much like reforming the HRE, is probably a toy for human players. Not the game's AI.

And as for multiplayer, if you've found some multiplayer partners who actually sit there while you sort through each individual population without abandoning you completely, you are so blessed in your life already that you'll survive adapting to these changes.

Found an even better point. Return to post 1 in this topic. The icons for "Conformist" and "Deviants" are still available traits. Ethics divergence on an individual level is still a thing, just less random where they diverge to, and no longer happening with distance.

Them continuing to use an icon is not a better point. Never have they ever thrown out a perfectly serviceable piece of graphic design while creating an expansion and that they chose to continue using the icon for "conformist" after either reassigning it to a different trait or reworking the conformist trait so it's compatible with the changes in Utopia does not prove that "ethics divergence on an individual level is still a thing."

Ethos shifting on an individual level is absolutely still going to be a thing. But it won't be the ethics divergence you think it is.
 
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