In What Situation is Bio Ascension a Good Choice?

[TwoTonTuna]

Can anyone out there posit a situation where Bio is a superior choice over Synth or Psi? I just can't find a niche for it.

Synths just produce more of everything, what with +25% universal robot/synth output. 10% from synth tech, 10% from synth ascension perk, and 5% from synth leader. And this isn't even factoring in traits.

Psi is the instant boost without having to stall research. You get instant species-wide boosts, and then you'll spend a little society research unlocking the shroud.

Pop growth speed? Synths win again, with multiple roboticists producing pops faster than cloning vats. Grab ecumenopoleis and/or thrall worlds for organic growth. You even get to streamline conquered pops, assimilating them into synths instead of wasting society tech points upgrading each and every pop you bring into your empire.

Even nerve-stapled livestock is no longer as attractive as it once was. Hydroponics Bays give decent food, while farmers with food processors can easily supply your empire's food needs. This, even with cloning vats and nutritional plenitude gobbling up food like no tomorrow

[キールス]

If you are playing a Hive Mind since you don't have a choice.

[tathen]

its a fight between bio and synth.. i think its bio if u can get brain slugs? or other eventful buffs

Psy is considers not worth it due to RNG

[R131]

shroud is useless now last game i played it was pure bad outcomes every single time, if you get brainslugs the evasion buffs stack nicely for admirals which makes getting those 90% evade destroyers easy but thats still pretty meh, they are nice as rapid response fleets with a bit more attrition than corvette fleets.

[Koveras]

They're good in every situation. Only pick synthetic evolution if you're looking to meta-game. I'll push back on the comments on psi. Psi does have a higher risk because you don't always get the rewards in quick order. But the rewards are better. Nothing compares to a psi-jump drive. There are no better shields than psionic shields. Most of the covenants are very good, and don't cost you much at all. Shroud curses are trivial and fleeting.

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by Kodesh:

Can anyone out there posit a situation where Bio is a superior choice over Synth or Psi?

It's generally better then Psi unless you get lucky with the shroud rolls.

As far as i know the general consensus is that Synth is the best ascension path, Bio is second best and Psi worst (mostly thanks to its randomness).

Obviously that is just the general consensus, there are arguments to be made for each.

[TwoTonTuna]

Originally posted by Garatgh Deloi:

Originally posted by Kodesh:

Can anyone out there posit a situation where Bio is a superior choice over Synth or Psi?

It's generally better then Psi unless you get lucky with the shroud rolls.

As far as i know the general consensus is that Synth is the best ascension path, Bio is second best and Psi worst (mostly thanks to its randomness).

I've been thinking about psi lately, and I have to say that it's more a short-term boost than a long-term one.

Cyborg ascension, synth ascension, and synth modification require you to stall your engineering for a couple of decades. Not a problem in SP where the AI is dumb as rocks, but a serious issue in in an MP setting.

Mind Over Matter and Transcendance instantly confer bonuses to pops and leaders as well--further widening the gap. And the time they spend unlocking the shroud comes from society research--which is also significantly shorter than ascension and pop modification of synths.

By the time you get your synths ascended and modified, your psionic opponent already has x-slotted battleships with t3 strike craft, t4/t5 armor, t4 engines, and t2 photon torpedoes.

you will need to hold on hard in order for your synths to eventually outproduce, outresearch, and outpopulate the psionics--assuming they haven't conquered enough colonies to simply swamp your economy with theirs

So short term = psionic, long term = synth.

This is why bio is so yuck compared to the two. You will still need to sink decades of research into unlocking Genetic Resequencing along with modifying your founder species.

Granted society is not as important as engineering when it comes to ships and weaponry, but that's still a block that holds back the progression of your empire--and all to come up with pops that produce significantly fewer resources than ascended synths.

[HappySack]

I would say if you're playing without robots for some reason or if you're going to have slaves, maybe even both like in my early days.

[pete3great]

Synthetic ascension is best if you're going super-wide with a lot of different species. If it's only one or two species, bio-ascension is best. As mentioned above, hive minds are good for this, necrophages are good for this too, improving your worker species and simply devouring every other species to turn into the primary species.

[Danny]

Originally posted by tathen:

Psy is considers not worth it due to RNG

Unless RNGesus loves you :D

[talemore]

Bio ascension will provide more trait points because you gain them from self modified species. Servitude robots provide a huge boost to happiness. Tomb world habitability, not that useful when you can cheat the habitability with robots. Tomb worlds are almost never happening during a siege that it's not even useful for a defensive player and since robots have 200 , they do not even gain disadvantages from the galactic council or conditions on planets. Just to describe what % means in Stellaris; a planetary shield with 100% reduction from bombardment will not reduce the damage taken from an armageddon bombardment stance because % is actually an addition and subtraction 100% = 1.0 out of an infinite number. This is why robots have 200% habitability because of a technical flaw in the design of programming using what we could call quantum physics who do not work based on the physics of reality. To actually have 100% habitability it need to have a value above the maximum possible combination and cause lots of bugs where mechanics based on % doesn't make sense since it never uses it.

[Journeyman Prime]

Bio is good for:

a) Min-Maxing leaders. It may seem rather trivial but with long lifespans and high xp gain you can get to level 10 leaders rather quickly and level 10 bonuses are comparable to psionic leader bonuses in terms of yield. This makes Bio a solid choice for Necrophages, especially since nerve-stapled slaves don't need a psi corp to keep them in line. While psi is good for Necrophages too, bio makes the empire run a lot smoother as a matter of course.

b) Flexibility. Bio, especially once you get deeper into it, allows you to change an entire species completely on a dime. One year you have a certain species geared for worker job production, and the next you can have them geared for unity/science. If you are xenophobic you could theoretically engineer a species to be a bioweapon (all negative traits with Fertile) and then kick them out of your empire to let them infect other nations and hopefully bog those empires down economically. The sheer flexibility of Bio is its strength. Its the "Jack of all Trades" path

c) Habitability. I know you can always go down the terraforming tech path and such, but the ability to have 100% habitability on any planet type can be a distinct advantage. There are some pretty powerful planetary modifiers that vanish with terraforming, so just turning every planet into a gaia world isn't entirely optimal. As a side bonus, having a separate sub-species for each planet type allows you to essentially force other nations to grow pops of your own species over their own through migration treaties. I had one playthrough where I got something like 4000 of my founder species in the galaxy (nobody else got higher either) by game's end because every other nation spent most of their time growing my pops which could live anywhere and were Fertile to boot. It was crazy. My species ended up being represented in the ruling elite of every other country in the galaxy because our galactic population was the highest.

d) Gene Soldiers. If you put aside the whole "Armies=irrelevant" thing, Gene Warrior armies give you the most bang for your buck. I remember testing them vs psionic armies and they did really well despite the whole issues with morale. Can't remember who won though. Essentially if you are concerned about efficiency in all things, Bio may be best because of its trait-modding and gene soldiers being worth 3-4 regular armies each.

e) The ability to make any species look like something else. Its more cosmetic than meta-gamey, but I personally always found it fun to turn the Ketlings into the fox-furries and give them "Charismatic."

[mister_lobos]

well.. my actual answer was already stated, possibly more then once.. basically if you will have multiple species in your empire, you can customize them for different roles..

but overall.. "when is..... good" when you find it fun. if you want to genetically alter some beings, go for it... or if you want to turn them into cyborgs / droids go for that.
"do what you enjoy as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else" (besides xeno scum, feel free to hurt or alter them)

[TwoTonTuna]

Originally posted by MayhemX8:

Bio is good for:

a) Min-Maxing leaders. It may seem rather trivial but with long lifespans and high xp gain you can get to level 10 leaders rather quickly and level 10 bonuses are comparable to psionic leader bonuses in terms of yield. This makes Bio a solid choice for Necrophages, especially since nerve-stapled slaves don't need a psi corp to keep them in line. While psi is good for Necrophages too, bio makes the empire run a lot smoother as a matter of course.

b) Flexibility. Bio, especially once you get deeper into it, allows you to change an entire species completely on a dime. One year you have a certain species geared for worker job production, and the next you can have them geared for unity/science. If you are xenophobic you could theoretically engineer a species to be a bioweapon (all negative traits with Fertile) and then kick them out of your empire to let them infect other nations and hopefully bog those empires down economically. The sheer flexibility of Bio is its strength. Its the "Jack of all Trades" path

c) Habitability. I know you can always go down the terraforming tech path and such, but the ability to have 100% habitability on any planet type can be a distinct advantage. There are some pretty powerful planetary modifiers that vanish with terraforming, so just turning every planet into a gaia world isn't entirely optimal. As a side bonus, having a separate sub-species for each planet type allows you to essentially force other nations to grow pops of your own species over their own through migration treaties. I had one playthrough where I got something like 4000 of my founder species in the galaxy (nobody else got higher either) by game's end because every other nation spent most of their time growing my pops which could live anywhere and were Fertile to boot. It was crazy. My species ended up being represented in the ruling elite of every other country in the galaxy because our galactic population was the highest.

d) Gene Soldiers. If you put aside the whole "Armies=irrelevant" thing, Gene Warrior armies give you the most bang for your buck. I remember testing them vs psionic armies and they did really well despite the whole issues with morale. Can't remember who won though. Essentially if you are concerned about efficiency in all things, Bio may be best because of its trait-modding and gene soldiers being worth 3-4 regular armies each.

e) The ability to make any species look like something else. Its more cosmetic than meta-gamey, but I personally always found it fun to turn the Ketlings into the fox-furries and give them "Charismatic."

Point A makes some sense. Your founder species could be modified to have Erudite, Quick Learners, Talented, and Robust while other species could be set to slaves/residents. Slap on the Capacity Boosters leader enhancement along with the life span repeatable, and you'll have semi-immortal leaders leveling 25% faster than normal.

Honestly though, immortal synths with the Learning Algorithms trait and Capacity Boosters leader enhancement does pretty much the same--all while your founder species gets the native +25% output that synths get.

Point B is not valid, as you can do the same with synths. You can create templates that specialize in mining/energy/tech/unity, then apply them on a colony that specializes in mining/energy/tech/unity. If you assimilate all organics that emigrate willingly or are conquered by force, you can even cut out farmers--freeing up even more pops for other jobs.

Point C is null as well, since Terraforming, Habitability Modification, and Migration Treaties solve that problem even without the Bio ascension perks. Gaia terraforming will only remove a select number of modifiers (bleak, irradiated, wild storms, hostile fauna, and hazardous weather) but a flat 100% habitability, 10% job output, and 10% bio happiness is honestly much better than what any of those modifiers can give. Except maybe hazardous weather, which will give 10% more energy output and 4 more energy districts than what a gaia world can provide.

Point D has some merit. Although if i'm being honest, you just need to bring a larger army than the garrison. Robotic Assault armies deal half the damage of Gene Warriors, but they cost half the minerals and half the energy maintenance. Robots also have 400 hp, so two robot armies have a total health pool of 800 health--300 more than a single Gene Warrior.

Point E is the only one I won't argue with. Furry fox slaves are definitely the superior choice over large rats that constantly scratch themselves.

[Imperial Guardsman]

In any situation where you aren't going synth and don't want to go psionic for RP. Psionic is super gimped mechanically, the main selling point is the trait... which you can get on your pops even without going for Transcendence.

If you really want to cheese it up, you can go bio and get psionic cyborg superpops with a little creativity.

[Journeyman Prime]

Originally posted by Kodesh:

Gaia terraforming will only remove a select number of modifiers (bleak, irradiated, wild storms, hostile fauna, and hazardous weather) but a flat 100% habitability, 10% job output, and 10% bio happiness is honestly much better than what any of those modifiers can give. Except maybe hazardous weather, which will give 10% more energy output and 4 more energy districts than what a gaia world can provide.

There's more modifiers than that that are removed with terraforming. Titanic Life is one of the biggest, especially when tech rushing, and you forgot it. +25% society research is pretty powerful regardless of whether you make it a tech or culture world, and if you were to terraform it first you would lose out on the event that allows you to hunt the Titans for significant amounts of food.

You also went through my post "nullifying" (discounting) the advantages I listed when that's not what the OP was about. The OP asked what advantages Bio had, not how it compared to Synths. While there are some advantages that both synth and bio have, there are advantages bio has that a hypothetical player may want to have alongside the advantages it shares with synth.

I could argue with you about the advantages of bio-maxed leaders over synth-maxed leaders, but it seems that's what you want so I'm not going to give it to you.