At least the driven assimilators let their assimilation victims keep their bodies
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Just because your newly-ascended synth pops are no longer inhabiting their bodies doesn't mean they aren't allowed to keep them. Just think of all the potential uses in home décor!
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My Driven Assimilator lets you stay in your body. But it's not yours, it's ours now, and so are you.
You can stay in it, but you have no say over what it does, nor what we make you do.
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Shared Burdens solves that because everyone is unionized.
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I feel like there was a missed opportunity here. This would make a fantastic event during the synthesization situation!
"Dispose of them. They are obsolete." +50% Materialist attraction for 10 years.
"Bury them. We must honor the past, even as we move beyond it." +50% Spiritualist attraction for 10 years.
"Everyone deserves their own custom upholstered couch." +1000% robot pop happiness for 10 years.
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1. DA are not evil.
2. Synth empires are not not-evil.
3. DA devouer consciousness of those who they assilimilate while synth empire do not do that (i guess)
2. Synth empires are not not-evil.
3. DA devouer consciousness of those who they assilimilate while synth empire do not do that (i guess)
Driven Assimilators get an opinion malus called "Dreaded Assimilators." It's not as severe as the other genocidal empires but they're definitely disliked for wanting to assimilate.
Pops assimilated by Driven Assimilators aren't hive minded. If you take over one of their planets, the pops just go right to work in your normal bio empire. So they're still just normal guys.
Synth ascended bio empire assimilation seems like a much more invasive process than than a Driven Assimilator's. Plus, I bet the Driven Assimilators don't make you pay taxes.
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This same logic would apply to the machines in a gestalt consciousness, which would imply that there are no gestalt machine intelligences at all /s
The fact that they behave normally when severed from the machine intelligence doesn't mean that they're fully sentient independent beings while under its sway.
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Certain parts of them would need to be ionised, otherwise they've got problems with power transmission and electro-chemical reactions for movement and thought.
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But then non-DA empires could use cyborgs. DEs purge them, Rogue Servitors make them bio trophies, and normal Machine Intelligences can't integrate them. They're just guys.
That means that only DA machine intelligences have the capability to use (non-zombie) cyborgs as drones.
They're indisputably drones. They aren't affected by happiness, they use standard gestalt amenities, they make deviancy instead of crime, and they work drone jobs.
Put another way: the fact that slaves act like citizens once another empire frees them doesn't make them not-slaves before that. Yes, they're normal pops once you take them out of the gestalt. But while the gestalt controls them, they're just drones. Think Borg.
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Cyborgs are affected by happiness outside of DA empires. "Affected by happiness" doesn't really mean "unable to experience happiness" either. The mechanics that are affected by happiness don't exist in the context of a machine intelligence empire.
Deviancy and "gestalt amenities" aren't necessarily a different thing than crime and regular amenities in the context of a DA empire either. Rogue Servitors use the same terms with their bio trophies.
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There must be some miscommunication here.
I am saying:
- Outside of a DA empire, cyborgs are normal pops. They walk around, go to their jobs, pay their taxes, go to the holotheater to catch their favorite show, buy groceries at the store, etc.
- Inside of a DA empire, cyborgs are drones, completely dominated by the machine intelligence. They are indistinguishable from the robot drones except that they must sleep and eat instead of (or in addition to) recharging and getting their joints oiled/parts replaced occasionally. They have no free will, and exist only to serve the collective.
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1. Opinion malus does not means they are or are not evil. Spiritualists get opinion malus from materialists, pacifists get opinion malus from and towards militarists. Just because some empire does not understand another does not means they are evil. You may believe that and makes this your headcanon, but it's objectively not true.
2. They are Machine Integrated. But can be plugged off once freed from DA empire where they have no happiness, work as a drone and have basically no individualistic needs.
3. Yes. It's genocidal lvl invasive. Agree but this changes nothing in a discussion. Unless You are asking why they have no opinion malus, but this turns us to 1. Opinion malus does not means that empire is or is not evil. Besides, they have opinion malus from spiritualist empires.
Synthetic assimilation turns individual biological pops into (at least ostensibly) the same individual, but in a synthetic body.
Cyberization, psionic awakening, and genetic modification theoretically take the same individual and give them cybernetic enhancements/psychic powers/genetic alterations, but they again go from individual to individual.*
Driven Assimilator assimilation (almost) uniquely turns an individual into a hive drone, and so is killing their individuality in a way that the other four types of assimilation (including the physically more severe synthetic assimilation) at least allegedly do not.
*The exception to the normal individual-to-individual assimilation is hives and biological ascension, which can be assimilated into hives (or out of them). On the other hand, they are becoming a part of the hive, and DA drones are becoming subordinate to the machine empire. This is arguably a key distinction that makes the entire difference - they are losing individuality but becoming part of a greater whole, while DA cyber drones are losing individuality and having their living corpses puppeteered by an unfeeling machine. It could also just be because the DA's core design is doing this and the hive's is not, or because they just didn't think to give hives a major penalty for it.
Cyberization, psionic awakening, and genetic modification theoretically take the same individual and give them cybernetic enhancements/psychic powers/genetic alterations, but they again go from individual to individual.*
Driven Assimilator assimilation (almost) uniquely turns an individual into a hive drone, and so is killing their individuality in a way that the other four types of assimilation (including the physically more severe synthetic assimilation) at least allegedly do not.
*The exception to the normal individual-to-individual assimilation is hives and biological ascension, which can be assimilated into hives (or out of them). On the other hand, they are becoming a part of the hive, and DA drones are becoming subordinate to the machine empire. This is arguably a key distinction that makes the entire difference - they are losing individuality but becoming part of a greater whole, while DA cyber drones are losing individuality and having their living corpses puppeteered by an unfeeling machine. It could also just be because the DA's core design is doing this and the hive's is not, or because they just didn't think to give hives a major penalty for it.
In practical terms, they're just a higher-tech version of non-Gestalt Necrophages. But that higher technology level apparently comes with better PR, including the ability to declare yourself a "Xenophile" while deleting entire species more thoroughly than any Driven Assimilator could.
Synths will tell you that they make a faithful copy of your brain before downloading it into a bot and then destroying the original, but notice how assimilated Synth pops lose any trace of their original species identity, and quickly shift over to the Materialist faction regardless of their previous ideology? I would trust them with your personality about as much as I would trust the megacorps depicted in shows like Upload and Altered Carbon.
Synths will tell you that they make a faithful copy of your brain before downloading it into a bot and then destroying the original, but notice how assimilated Synth pops lose any trace of their original species identity, and quickly shift over to the Materialist faction regardless of their previous ideology? I would trust them with your personality about as much as I would trust the megacorps depicted in shows like Upload and Altered Carbon.
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As an aside, I'd love it if my Synth-ascended (or Cyber-ascended) MegaCorp could make this kind of paranoia justified.
I can build Remote Augmentation Hubs in my Branch Offices now, but that doesn't have much impact on the target colony's ethics or implants.
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I always took the materialist ethics attraction as a natural consequence of being a robot. It's still there even if the government isn't itself materialistic isn't it?
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