Synthetic Evolution - Probably the weakest ascension path, with the least potential?

[cbdeakin]

It seems like there is very little room for development with this path, beyond transferring pops from organic to machine.

Apart from reducing costs a bit, what are the main reasons to choose this path? It requires synthetics tech and synth personality matrix for the major project, but the payoff seems a little underwhelming, considering the scale of the project itself.

One area that has improved is the agenda's that allow easier bee-lining to the tech requirements, to unlock this path. But, it's still quite a lengthy process.

Do you choose this option for role play reasons, or strategy?

[joiss90]

I think Synthetic Evolution probably could give fully immortal leaders as it is rather slow and by that point Organic leaders are getting closer to becoming immortal and it is already quite rare (so it won't be that big of a buff) but it is rather annoying when it does randomly happen

[mss73055]

The mortality rate of synthetic leaders is worse than what "Venerable" brings.
When I advance to synthetic from Venerable my leaders die left and right.

[cbdeakin]

I just remembered that the Synthetic personality matrix technology lets you employ new synthetic (immortal) leaders (but not convert your current leaders).

You just need to Synthetics technology for this tech to appear, Synthetic Evolution is not required, nor is the related special Synth conversion project.

So, it's pretty damn good if you can somehow unlock it early, one way would be through the new agendas.

So, the benefit of Synth Evolution does seem quite limited.

[Bill]

Synthetics are overpowered, that's about it. 100% habitability, extra output, extra leader traits, long-lived leaders, a good number of synthetic pop traits, lots of pop assembly speed, no food upkeep, it has most of the benefits of machine empires and the only drawback is that the empire greatly angers spiritualists. For a good amount of updates it was the uncontested best ascension path in the game, and arguably still is even after all the buffs to the Genetic and Psionic ascension paths.

[CrUsHeR]

Ursprungligen skrivet av mss73055:

The mortality rate of synthetic leaders is worse than what "Venerable" brings.
When I advance to synthetic from Venerable my leaders die left and right.

Not really? For Machines or Synth leaders, it works like this:

Every 10 years, there's one 5% chance roll. If this succeeds, one random machine/synth leader dies.



So on average, you lose 1 leader every 200 years (20 rolls with 5%). Independent from how many leaders you actually have.

Now if you have - for example - 20 synth leaders employed, the average effective lifespan per leader is 4000 years.

Actual Machine Empires can also reduce the accident chance from 5% to 2.5%, in the case with 20 leaders this would mean 8000 years of average lifespan.



Of course, the subjective experience is usually different. Like you just got the Warform Renown leader, and he dies literally at the first interval of this mechanic.

[cbdeakin]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Bill:

Synthetics are overpowered, that's about it.

I think synth robots are good. (new) synth leaders are decent also, due to being immortal. Both unlockable via tech research (and a new agenda to help with this).

But is Synthetic Evolution and the associated project, worth it? After the conversion project, you don't get 0 consumer goods costs (because the pops are now given full rights), like Machine Empires do, for their machine pops. Before you do the project, your current synths can be set to use 0 consumer goods, so it feels like a loss in some ways.

I don't think it's a particularly good option in the current game version. Particularly if you play with the overtuned origin, you definitely don't want to lose those tasty overtuned traits.

The Synth / mechanical traits themselves for pops aren't particularly interesting in my view.

Ideally, people would ask 'what's the best ascension perk overall' and the answer would be 'I don't know' or, 'they are all good'.

[Bill]

With the Overtuned origin you're encouraged to lean more into Genetic Ascension rather than Synthetic Ascension, or maybe Cybernetic ascension if you want to counteract the leader lifespan penalties and have more points for more overtuned traits (it increases trait picks). None of the other ascension paths give you 0 consumer goods either, and you can run into problems with messing around with the synth rights, namely AI revolts.
The traits are not very interesting but they are still good.

[Jack Jester]

I've now played through genetics, synth and psionics and they were all kind of fun.

Psionics is very worthwhile if you have a lot of ground offensives and need to fly further distances. You can also monitor your people better. Suited my playing style best.

At first I was skeptical about all the new changes but i like it. The new DLC is very good.

The only thing I have to complain about, the overview of leaders is not really well solved. You still have to work on it a little. Too often I don't know who works where or not finding the person responsible for an event.

P.S. all can produce immortal leaders!

[mss73055]

The biggest boon of Synthetics is: it gets around the logistic growth curve of organic pops.
You will have a never ending stream of immigrants applying for synthetic.

[CrUsHeR]

There are several very obvious problems:


1) It takes too long to implement

In theory you can take any ascension perk as your third pick, but likely you only have access to Cybernetics at this point (which is generally speaking better anyways), perhaps also Genetics (already one tier higher) or Psionics (same as Genetics but more variable to find)

You can enact an agenda to unlock all the synth-related techs one by one, but this also takes forever. First you need to finish your current agenda, then run through three other agendas (positronic AI, synthetics, synth personality matrix). Don't remember if this has a cooldown.

Afterwards you still have to research all this stuff, which only unlocks at 25% progress, so each of these techs takes 3-4x longer to research than the Cybernetics tech.

Then assuming you have everthing in place, you also need the final robo-modding point for your final pop template. Without this, the synths are still not much of an upgrade.

And then you have to mod your entire population into this template, which takes up the engineering research department. This department however is by far the most busy already, think Mega-Engineering being delayed for about a decade.



2) Fallen Empire wants to murder you

Don't know why this is still a thing, but the Spiritualist FE demands humiliation after you complete synth ascension. Unless you already have a galaxy-wide federation with competetive fleets at this stage of the game.
So you can only accept the humiliation debuff for 10 years, and they will demand this again after the debuff runs out.

If you don't accept the humiliation, they declare a war you cannot win, after which your empire ruler will be executed and your artificial AI policy is set to "outlawed". So you not only lose your ruler you've been grooming since game start, but you also have to disassemble your own population for 10 years.
So that's literally a death sentence if it happens.



3) Pops do no longer assimilate into your real main species template

Originally, you could mod your new synth species into your desired template, then delete the unmodded template. All assimilated pops would then become this new template.

However since you can no longer delete the base template, assimilation always turns pops into the unmodded version of your species.

Which means that you have to run recurring projects just to apply your real template to all these pops. Takes a lot of time, micromanagement, and somewhat defeats the former reason to choose Synth Ascension.

[tathen]

they need to rework all of the Ascension Paths should be able to mix some of them to unlock advanced Traits

Synthetics should be an advanced Cybernetic path, Psionics should be an advanced Genetic path

should also allow a Genetic/Cybernetic mix for people who dont want to go down the advanced paths

Machine Intelligence needs a Wetware Path(reverse Synthetics path) that opens up Genetic & Psionics Ascensions for them
Rogue Servitor should get access to a Cybernetics/Genetics Paths for there Bio-Trophys

Overtuned should be an advanced Ascension Path for Genetics, (starting as Overtuned should still be an option)

[cbdeakin]

I think I'd be happy for them just to expand what they've done already, perhaps add some new Ascension stages /levels, probably with a few new technologies as well.

I'd like to have the option to specialise in 2 (maybe 3) different ways after the 1st ascension stage is complete.

[cbdeakin]

There could be an ascension perk that lets a civilisation become beings of energy, rather than matter. Maybe that could follow on from psionics stage 1, I'm not sure.

I suppose this could represent a step towards becoming more like the beings in The Shroud, presumably making communication with them much easier.

[Geoff]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Jack Jester:

P.S. all can produce immortal leaders!

I must lack the gene that makes this so appealing to people. If a leader lives on for too long, I'll off them myself.

[DYNIA]

"Synthetic Evolution - Probably the weakest ascension path"


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