Synthetic Ascension in 3.5

[Pattata]

I'm hoping I'm missing something and that I didn't just sabotage my empire for no reason.

It's been awhile since I played Stellaris, as in mid 2.0s. I decided to come back and give Synthetic Ascension a shot and after doing so, all of my main pops lose all of their traits and are immediately supplanted from their ruler positions by former robots. My empire is xenophobic and my population apparently considers their own robots too alien to give any living standards beyond Residence so my new rulers, which kicked out my original species, are all unhappy and decimating my factions. My origin species, now unemployed and traitless, is pissed off and wrecking my stability. When I want to give my new ascended species traits, they have the exact same amount of picks and points as these created robots. So why bother ascending them? They don't seem to have any benefits above the other synths.

Am I missing something? I feel like I just spent an ascension path to sabotage myself. I remember synthetic ascension being incredibly strong and I certainly don't remember it causing this much friction immediately after ascension.

[Pattata]

For additional info, my empire is Fanatic Materialist and Xenophobic lite. I have full citizenship for AI under my policies, but when setting species rights it blocks it. Every single one of my original species was replaced from their ruler positions by synthetics.

Additionally I cannot put the synthetics into a servitude position to utilize their strengths because I'm a synthetic empire. I feel like I just kinda wasted my time here.

[Mennan]

I mean synthetic evolution should of turned your bio pops into synth pops to take the ruling class and be the only ones with citizenship.

Other created robots/synths would remain at whatever you set it to, which as a xenophobe the highest category available would be residence.

[Wisch]

Xenophobe ethics doesn't restrict robot rights at all. You can technically set your policies to robot servitude as a materialist, but it shouldn't be locked. The only thing I can think of is that you somehow bugged the game into letting you ascend before getting the robot leaders tech, and it doesn't know how to handle it. I've not heard of something like this happening before.

[Pattata]

Synthetic Ascension turned my bio pops into Synthetic pops without traits. My former robots-turned-synths, despite being residence, have taken over all ruler positions. I'm just not seeing why this is supposed to be a benefit at any point.

I cannot set my synthetics to robot servitude due to being a synthetic empire. I cannot give them above residence due to my population seeing them as too alien. I'm feeling like something broke at some point because this is just all downsides on a management level I feel, but wanted to see if I'm missing something.

[HappySack]

There's no restrictions on setting your robots on servitude, I'm not exactly sure what has gone wrong here but you'd better show a screenshot because you're doing something wrong or the game somehow did break.

[Mennan]

The conversion without traits is new but it makes sense all the biologic traits no longer apply because your now a set of robots and need robot traits.
Seems like bad implementation they should of allowed you choose them at the conversion.
so you don't have to immediately do a species modification. Or its a bug from mods.

However Xenophobe government has never allowed any other species robot or otherwise to gain *full* citizenship.
As a xenophobe empire you cannot grant *any* species full citizenship other then your starting species. So you can still set it in your policies tab to *allow* synths citizenship you can't go to the species tab and actually set it.

So if your former base species is now being blocked from gaining citizenship then sounds like something broke in a update or its a mod problem.

[Pattata]

Here's some screenshots to show it as I'm afraid that I may be explaining it poorly. Let me know if anything else needs to be shown to clarify it. I can understand the idea of the secondary synths never being equal. I have no problem with that. I even am fine with the traits needed to be applied to the newly ascended species (even though that is extremely clunky). I'm simply confused at the shuffling of all of the jobs in the empire, the inability to move the secondary synths to a strata where they would not impact factions as much rather than being miserable rulers, and the lack of a distinction between the capability of an ascended synth species and just a normal created synth quality-wise. Again, it has been quite awhile since I've played so it might just be the way of it now and I didn't realize, but the friction of this ascension path has made me definitely not want to go it as a xenophobe in the future.

And to clarify, my base species is not being blocked from citizenship but are being removed from their ruler positions by the secondary species. This is causing massive issues due to unhappiness of residency affecting stability.
https://imgur.com/a/yO9HaNz

[HappySack]

Ok something is definitely wrong here, I think it might have to do with being part xenophobe that's somehow overriding the ability to control your AI rights.

[Mennan]

The fact you made your base species a Ai means you cannot lower your Ai policies(Citizen rights).
The fact your a xenophobe means you cannot grant your robots full citizenship.

What's not working as intended is the job system, your newly uplifted Ai citizens should be filling the ruler ship roles and all your robots should of stayed where they were.

Try to remove the jobs priority then bring it back to see if your base pops will move back into them.


As for the lack of actual functional distinction between a common robot and a new synth.

It's because they both use the same modification point amounts. When you changed from bio to mechanical your pops changed from using Bio trait points to Robot trait points.

Your citizens themselves are no different from a normal robot trait wise.
So they still use happiness and consumer goods compared to a robot that doesn't
The benefit is that Synth leaders are slightly better than robot leaders.

[EleventhStar]

i guess if you do the trick where you keep your original species around during ascension it just doesn't play nice with xenophobe. try it with proper full ascension if you have an old save (make sure you have no planets in the colonization process when ascension happens. also check any existing colony ships, i think they fixed those to update but not sure.)

it's normal that your pops don't have traits anymore after becoming robots, being a robot itself gives a big bonus but it's not easy to see nowadays, then just spend your 5 robot points on top of that.

AI rights should also say "synthetic ascension" instead of giving you the usual choices. maybe a mod (or lack of mod?)