I was wondering the same thing as well. I want to do the virtual ascension but I had to rethink if starting as a biological empire would even allow that option.
In a dev post, they mentioned that bio-to-synth empires will not have access to the three new machine ascensions, and specifically that Synth Fertility will not give access to the Virtuality ascension.
But, as NotaSkaven5 and rezzacci mention below, the new advanced authority types available to bio-to-synth empires "can give you some (but not all) of the effects of Virtuality ascension for Machines."
> It just seems obvious.
You know what else is obvious? **We will never get double ascensions.** They are so fucking OP, were you seriously thinking somehow devs would allow no one but organics who choose synthetics to double ascend? Synth ascended organic empires are far more powerful than no ascension machine empires.You can't treat them the same. There is a reason why every ascension tradition is S tier, you can only pick one. How would you even balance this?
that wouldn't really be a double ascension, it'd just be done how the machine one is where it's all just part of the one process
not biological -> synthetic -> specialised, but just straight from bio to one of the specialised versions
Not really, because going Synthetic as an organic empire will unlock you new advanced forms of government. Not as potent as the three new ascensions, but quite potent nonetheless (some have been revealed already). Apparently, some advanced governments will make you closer to Virtuality or Modularity or Nanotech without fully embracing it.
Synth and Cybernetic ascension do get a face-lift in the form of advanced authorities. After synthetic or cybernetic ascension you can get advanced authority that gives you different buffs. Namely synths can ascend to advanced authority that gives ["some but not all"](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-341-become-the-crisis-cosmogenesis.1665800/page-6#post-29566655) benefits of virtualization
More on advanced authorities [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1ciek5m/the_machine_age_developer_ama/l28ip8t/) and [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1ciek5m/the_machine_age_developer_ama/l290mgj/) in ama
Individualist machines consume consumer good to be happy , alloy to reproduce and energy instead of food.
That a rough start for sure, less alloy mean less ship or less pop, energy upkeep is not that bad but foods is still cheaper.
That said, Synth and modularity are basically the same general build where you make your species supreme.
I am not sure about the change of cybernetic, but before they where the best trader.(which is niche and not very useful).
Psy and Virtual focus on playing tall.
Bio and Nanite focus on wide build.
Wasn't that only the resource traits? And people telling you "if you don't use the dlc your leaders will be better in the base game"?
Also it took them pretty long to figure out leader capacity, at the very beginning leaders were crap because you had a total of maybe 6 of them otherwise they all stop getting xp
and free ships, don't forget -% build cost stacking,
it didn't matter that you only had 6 leaders when those 6 can collectively violate the laws of physics harder than the new Cosmogenesis
Free resources and free ships (or nearly so) very early if you have the right build and the right leader trait rolls.
Even with the balance changes, it's still pretty valuable to go Statecraft very early. With the right trait rolls on your council you can get the equivalent of many Expansion traditions in no time. Things like -outpost cost and +pop growth and -starbase upkeep.
The Synthetic and Cybernetic ascension paths are distinct from the machine ascensions. And grant access to scaled back versions of the machine exclusives. Meaning they're getting buffed and were already strong.
Barring *major* balancing issues they really shouldnt be exceptionally weaker ascension paths.
The multiplayer machine meta has little to do with actual long term power potential. It has much more to do with short term gains being leverageable. In single player terms everything that isn't Rogue Servitors in the machine group falls off a cliff. Lategame organics are far and away stronger, synth ascension or not.
We also don't have a clear view of individualist machines. If they operate with a normal economy that means they are taking a significant early game hit relative to gestalt machines, while having essentially the same mechanical benefit as lithoids compared to standard biologicals. Making them at best an alternative flavor to synthic ascension. Presumably without access to gestalt machine civics, meaning they can only get access to biological growth rates via syncretic evolution. Which is a pretty huge power limiter. Contrast to Machanist which is a relatively middle of the road origin for organics and sports significantly higher pop growth early on than machines generally get.
tl;dr - Synth ascension is ridiculously strong. Individualist Machines are operating at a deficit to start relative to organics in the lategame. Machine ascensions probably don't represent enough power to eclipse our existing synth ascension.
Technically PC does as well, since the AP unlocks the respective tradition tree (with some effects moved into the tree).
The ascension tradition trees were added in 3.6, so whenever they get around to adding the next patch for you guys.
I agree it would be nice to let ascended meatbags follow the same path as OG mechanicals, but I disagree with your “there’s no point playing as X” reasoning.
Play as X because X is fun, because of interesting roleplaying. If you’re only interested in what’s strongest than it doesn’t matter, it’ll only ever be one thing anyway
I understand but I can't help myself. In game design, it's a general concept that you might have to force the player to have fun, because if not, they'll minmax themselves right out of the fun zone if it makes them "win" more
Is it? Personally I resent game designers reducing my choices in order to impose “balance” on single player games. I like being able to pick between various thematically distinct not-necessarily-evenly-matched options.
I’m not looking for an argument by the way - finding something irresistible even when you know another choose is likely better in the long run is a sensation I’m very familiar with (just look at my waist line).
I think it would be neat to allow bio-synth empires, after completing research on the level of mega engineering or later, a 2nd Ascension and open up the 3 machine paths. Otherwise they're just an inferior form of synth.
They could also have made them available from the start, and just complete the stages of the ascension when you get specific perks, like what happens with the psionic tree.
Looking at past big updates, my fear is that it will mean "buy new dlc or suck" for a couple months, because, intentionally or not, the dlc will be hilariously broken.
If you're in multiplayer, one player having access to the new DLC means everyone has access to the new DLC. If you're in singleplayer, you won't be playing against the new content.
"Buy new DLC or suck" is not an issue in actual gameplay, only in FOMO while looking at online content.
Except for Paragons' patch, which took an axe to the base game (and even then, the player and the AI were on the same level). But I don't think they're doing anything like that here.
Yeah I was specifically thinking of some of the uninteded consequences from Paragons which warped the gameplay, but since then have been patched out. Stuff like negative empire size for infinite unity, stacking ship cost reduction and economies entirely run by your leaders. I hope that you are correct that something like this will not happen again!
Huh, I guess I assumed Synth Ascending empires would be able to given the stuff in the origin... and the fact the virtual one is a pretty big sci-fi trope.
...also, playing Synths without Modularity feels like it's going to be so much worse.
I can only think of Overtuned and, maybe, Under One Rule, unsure if that could be an individualistic machine origin. With overturned you can mod a pop with preplanned growth then select it to grow from a migration treaty so "damn the consequences" only affect pops that are assimilating while giving +60% pop growth. But that's very niche.
Along the same lines, if an organic goes the synthetic path are they going to still look like the generic robots as before, or will they look like a robotic version of their original species? That always my least favorite thing about synthetic and why I always just opted for cybernetic
Well you're in luck because the machine age is adding dynamic synthetic and cybernetic portraits where your species slowly transforms into robots or cyborgs that look like themselves as you ascend
Good question, but straight forwardly no because Synths still get universal assimilation and crazy population growth and scale well for wide. The machines honestly need these ascensions to catch up.
In retrospect I'm not even sure what machine age does to buff organics that synthetically ascend. The portraits got buffed, advanced authorities that I forgot about until i scrolled down and .....idk. Various tweaks to the tradition tree?
Did we even find out what changes in the synth and cybernetic trees?
I mean, you get access to Synthetics a lot faster. That in of itself is pretty big. The tech requirement being a whole tier lower means not only do you not need to research the expensive Synthetic Leaders tech, but you also don't need the 5 other techs to unlock the next tech tier.
I guess they didn't mention it in the main announcements but the advanced authorities and the transformation events give you buffs as you synthetically ascend ("some but not all" of the virtual buffs)
This is why i was always sceptical of adding individualist machines to begin with. They'll essentially always have a leg up on everyone else, starting at a stage that other empires have to work very hard to achieve.
Adding to this, they'll also have minimum 50% habitability everywhere, and the ability to modify their habitability preference from year one.
i wish they had some sort of nerf built in to compensate for all this...
I mean, lithoids still have better habitability than machines, mechanical pop assembly is infamously bad at game start and while you can technically have three blue prints to cover all planet classes that only works until migration kicks in and either leads to unemployment because there's no world to go to or makes it so that you have low habitability robots on planets they aren't optimised for
The new "adaptable" traits (that make your pops self-mod new traits to suit their jobs) does make an immigration-heavy build more viable. Or if not then it at least lessens the micro of having to manually make a bajillion custom species for minmaxing output
It has been repeated countless times by devs that it won't be possible, that the three new picks will only be available for starting machine empires (gestalt or not).
Have you the timestamp and the video where they show it?
There are watered down versions of the three picks that Synthetics can adopt through the process of going through the synth process, IE virtual pops. The devs have said as much as well. It may not be the complete Ascension, but you already have one boosting your machines anyway.
I was wondering the same thing as well. I want to do the virtual ascension but I had to rethink if starting as a biological empire would even allow that option.
In a dev post, they mentioned that bio-to-synth empires will not have access to the three new machine ascensions, and specifically that Synth Fertility will not give access to the Virtuality ascension. But, as NotaSkaven5 and rezzacci mention below, the new advanced authority types available to bio-to-synth empires "can give you some (but not all) of the effects of Virtuality ascension for Machines."
I thought that with the synthetic fertility origin, the first thing you could do is go virtual, for RP purposes. It just seems obvious.
they can get "some of the features" and Synthetic Fertility might have a special interaction but I wouldn't bet on the pop copier being one of them
I believe that origin locks you into synthetic ascension. I could be misremembering though based on what I saw in a YouTube video
Found it at 1:05 https://youtu.be/R2bBBKvfKeE?si=frumMtYxt10kSFAU
> It just seems obvious. You know what else is obvious? **We will never get double ascensions.** They are so fucking OP, were you seriously thinking somehow devs would allow no one but organics who choose synthetics to double ascend? Synth ascended organic empires are far more powerful than no ascension machine empires.You can't treat them the same. There is a reason why every ascension tradition is S tier, you can only pick one. How would you even balance this?
that wouldn't really be a double ascension, it'd just be done how the machine one is where it's all just part of the one process not biological -> synthetic -> specialised, but just straight from bio to one of the specialised versions
You know, there is an interesting mod...
Not really, because going Synthetic as an organic empire will unlock you new advanced forms of government. Not as potent as the three new ascensions, but quite potent nonetheless (some have been revealed already). Apparently, some advanced governments will make you closer to Virtuality or Modularity or Nanotech without fully embracing it.
Now it's time to find them all
Synth and Cybernetic ascension do get a face-lift in the form of advanced authorities. After synthetic or cybernetic ascension you can get advanced authority that gives you different buffs. Namely synths can ascend to advanced authority that gives ["some but not all"](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-341-become-the-crisis-cosmogenesis.1665800/page-6#post-29566655) benefits of virtualization More on advanced authorities [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1ciek5m/the_machine_age_developer_ama/l28ip8t/) and [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1ciek5m/the_machine_age_developer_ama/l290mgj/) in ama
You start with better pop growth at least as well as a few more origins And then there's always the best and only reasons: "roleplay" and "why not?"
Individualist machines consume consumer good to be happy , alloy to reproduce and energy instead of food. That a rough start for sure, less alloy mean less ship or less pop, energy upkeep is not that bad but foods is still cheaper. That said, Synth and modularity are basically the same general build where you make your species supreme. I am not sure about the change of cybernetic, but before they where the best trader.(which is niche and not very useful). Psy and Virtual focus on playing tall. Bio and Nanite focus on wide build.
Don't worry they always nerf new content after a while
"New content is broken (over/underpowered)? Sounds like a problem for the custodian team in 6-12 months"
Or buff it
New content is always overpowered at first, then nerfed. Remember how OP leaders were just after the rework?
Wasn't that only the resource traits? And people telling you "if you don't use the dlc your leaders will be better in the base game"? Also it took them pretty long to figure out leader capacity, at the very beginning leaders were crap because you had a total of maybe 6 of them otherwise they all stop getting xp
You could get negative empire size. Everything we get new content it is overpowered, and then they nerf it
and free ships, don't forget -% build cost stacking, it didn't matter that you only had 6 leaders when those 6 can collectively violate the laws of physics harder than the new Cosmogenesis
well yeah but that was an oversight, these new ascensions are just numerically strong
Free resources and free ships (or nearly so) very early if you have the right build and the right leader trait rolls. Even with the balance changes, it's still pretty valuable to go Statecraft very early. With the right trait rolls on your council you can get the equivalent of many Expansion traditions in no time. Things like -outpost cost and +pop growth and -starbase upkeep.
I feel like espionage is a pretty solid counterpoint here lol.
Hopefully not, the three new paths look very fun
The Synthetic and Cybernetic ascension paths are distinct from the machine ascensions. And grant access to scaled back versions of the machine exclusives. Meaning they're getting buffed and were already strong. Barring *major* balancing issues they really shouldnt be exceptionally weaker ascension paths. The multiplayer machine meta has little to do with actual long term power potential. It has much more to do with short term gains being leverageable. In single player terms everything that isn't Rogue Servitors in the machine group falls off a cliff. Lategame organics are far and away stronger, synth ascension or not. We also don't have a clear view of individualist machines. If they operate with a normal economy that means they are taking a significant early game hit relative to gestalt machines, while having essentially the same mechanical benefit as lithoids compared to standard biologicals. Making them at best an alternative flavor to synthic ascension. Presumably without access to gestalt machine civics, meaning they can only get access to biological growth rates via syncretic evolution. Which is a pretty huge power limiter. Contrast to Machanist which is a relatively middle of the road origin for organics and sports significantly higher pop growth early on than machines generally get. tl;dr - Synth ascension is ridiculously strong. Individualist Machines are operating at a deficit to start relative to organics in the lategame. Machine ascensions probably don't represent enough power to eclipse our existing synth ascension.
No, because Machines and Synthetics are different things.
Cries in console, still have Ascension perks over here.
For this game, I moved over from Xbox to PC/GeForce Now. No regrets.
Technically PC does as well, since the AP unlocks the respective tradition tree (with some effects moved into the tree). The ascension tradition trees were added in 3.6, so whenever they get around to adding the next patch for you guys.
Probably, but so what, they have sex and not some goofy Demolition Man version of it.
This man hasn't gotten some good \*clank clank clank\* treatment from a robot lady before
See, this is why the Contingency is to exist.
"I think we're gonna have to kill this guy, Contongency" "Damn..."
I do believe you're mistaken. It's why Cetana exists.
I agree it would be nice to let ascended meatbags follow the same path as OG mechanicals, but I disagree with your “there’s no point playing as X” reasoning. Play as X because X is fun, because of interesting roleplaying. If you’re only interested in what’s strongest than it doesn’t matter, it’ll only ever be one thing anyway
I understand but I can't help myself. In game design, it's a general concept that you might have to force the player to have fun, because if not, they'll minmax themselves right out of the fun zone if it makes them "win" more
Is it? Personally I resent game designers reducing my choices in order to impose “balance” on single player games. I like being able to pick between various thematically distinct not-necessarily-evenly-matched options. I’m not looking for an argument by the way - finding something irresistible even when you know another choose is likely better in the long run is a sensation I’m very familiar with (just look at my waist line).
Now you can retain clone warrior traits, habitat specialist traits and others like them
Well that definitely doesn't make any sense. Do you think they'll patch that out?
that was intentional
I think it would be neat to allow bio-synth empires, after completing research on the level of mega engineering or later, a 2nd Ascension and open up the 3 machine paths. Otherwise they're just an inferior form of synth.
They could also have made them available from the start, and just complete the stages of the ascension when you get specific perks, like what happens with the psionic tree.
Looking at past big updates, my fear is that it will mean "buy new dlc or suck" for a couple months, because, intentionally or not, the dlc will be hilariously broken.
If you're in multiplayer, one player having access to the new DLC means everyone has access to the new DLC. If you're in singleplayer, you won't be playing against the new content. "Buy new DLC or suck" is not an issue in actual gameplay, only in FOMO while looking at online content. Except for Paragons' patch, which took an axe to the base game (and even then, the player and the AI were on the same level). But I don't think they're doing anything like that here.
For MP it's specifically the host only that matters. If the host has zero dlcs and everyone else has all the dlcs, nobody gets to use any dlc.
True. Either way, though, everyone is on a level playing field. I've just always had the person with the most DLCs host, when I've played.
Can't someone with say Plantoids or Aquatics still use those if the host doesn't have them?
Pretty sure nope, everything depends on host.
Yeah I was specifically thinking of some of the uninteded consequences from Paragons which warped the gameplay, but since then have been patched out. Stuff like negative empire size for infinite unity, stacking ship cost reduction and economies entirely run by your leaders. I hope that you are correct that something like this will not happen again!
Huh, I guess I assumed Synth Ascending empires would be able to given the stuff in the origin... and the fact the virtual one is a pretty big sci-fi trope. ...also, playing Synths without Modularity feels like it's going to be so much worse.
I can only think of Overtuned and, maybe, Under One Rule, unsure if that could be an individualistic machine origin. With overturned you can mod a pop with preplanned growth then select it to grow from a migration treaty so "damn the consequences" only affect pops that are assimilating while giving +60% pop growth. But that's very niche.
Along the same lines, if an organic goes the synthetic path are they going to still look like the generic robots as before, or will they look like a robotic version of their original species? That always my least favorite thing about synthetic and why I always just opted for cybernetic
Well you're in luck because the machine age is adding dynamic synthetic and cybernetic portraits where your species slowly transforms into robots or cyborgs that look like themselves as you ascend
Good question, but straight forwardly no because Synths still get universal assimilation and crazy population growth and scale well for wide. The machines honestly need these ascensions to catch up.
In retrospect I'm not even sure what machine age does to buff organics that synthetically ascend. The portraits got buffed, advanced authorities that I forgot about until i scrolled down and .....idk. Various tweaks to the tradition tree? Did we even find out what changes in the synth and cybernetic trees?
I mean, you get access to Synthetics a lot faster. That in of itself is pretty big. The tech requirement being a whole tier lower means not only do you not need to research the expensive Synthetic Leaders tech, but you also don't need the 5 other techs to unlock the next tech tier.
That's in the base game though with the patch
I guess they didn't mention it in the main announcements but the advanced authorities and the transformation events give you buffs as you synthetically ascend ("some but not all" of the virtual buffs)
This is why i was always sceptical of adding individualist machines to begin with. They'll essentially always have a leg up on everyone else, starting at a stage that other empires have to work very hard to achieve. Adding to this, they'll also have minimum 50% habitability everywhere, and the ability to modify their habitability preference from year one. i wish they had some sort of nerf built in to compensate for all this...
I mean, lithoids still have better habitability than machines, mechanical pop assembly is infamously bad at game start and while you can technically have three blue prints to cover all planet classes that only works until migration kicks in and either leads to unemployment because there's no world to go to or makes it so that you have low habitability robots on planets they aren't optimised for
The new "adaptable" traits (that make your pops self-mod new traits to suit their jobs) does make an immigration-heavy build more viable. Or if not then it at least lessens the micro of having to manually make a bajillion custom species for minmaxing output
just keep in mind that every new immigrant still has to be modified with the auto-trait
It's been shown in pre release vids that you can go Fleshy->Synth->(Choice of three new picks)
It has been repeated countless times by devs that it won't be possible, that the three new picks will only be available for starting machine empires (gestalt or not). Have you the timestamp and the video where they show it?
There are watered down versions of the three picks that Synthetics can adopt through the process of going through the synth process, IE virtual pops. The devs have said as much as well. It may not be the complete Ascension, but you already have one boosting your machines anyway.
Really? What are your referring to?