Neural Superchargers

[kennygnu]

They take up four tiles and consume 400 power and without a mod you can't even assign ownership of them, resulting in utter chaos unless you just go for broke and put them all right in the middle of the dining hall.

By the time I reach Moderate Expectations and my Transhumanists start wanting to use these things, I usually have more than ten people in my colony. I'm currently drawing power from five geothermal generators and even that isn't enough to leave 13 or so Neural Superchargers on.

Honestly, my colony is thriving even with the constant -6 mood hit from the lack of Neural Supercharge.

So my question is... Why even use them at all? They will just never be worth it to me.

[MadArtillery]

I like them because they are just another way to get slightly more out of your pawns. Luckily we have Bioferrite generators now to help pad their power output as they provide so much power.

[kennygnu]

I forgot Bioferite generators were a thing. That might allow me to run my Neural Superchargers.

Still not worth the 10% manipulation for all that trouble in my honest opinion. They could be twice as small, twice as cheap to build and twice as fast to recharge and use and I'd still just be tempted to eat the -6 mood hit regardless.

The supercharger makes pawns eat more, too. I need to wait until spring to even have the surplus crops to feed my extra hungry pawns.

[MadArtillery]

Originally posted by kennygnu:

I forgot Bioferite generators were a thing. That might allow me to run my Neural Superchargers.

Still not worth the 10% manipulation for all that trouble in my honest opinion. They could be twice as small, twice as cheap to build and twice as fast to recharge and use and I'd still just be tempted to eat the -6 mood hit regardless.

It's consciousness not manipulation which means it's also effectively a combat health boost as they won't drop as fast from their injuries causing pain and boosts more things than manipulation. Also superchargers boosts learning for maxing skills.

[Monty]

I usually don't play transhumanists for this reason, the neural supercharging is a PITA to set up and age reversal is a constant drag, they don't have enough of an effect to justify the room resizing and resource expense.
Chronography and tea make them feel pretty redundant.

[kennygnu]

Yes. I usually just pick the body modification precept rather than the meme for this reason, but my latest colony uses the meme. The hex tile flooring is nice, but I think you get that with the Archist style as well.

The age reverseal does get so much easier with Anomaly DLC. I have no idea how I was ever supposed to get a 70-some-year-old geezer down below 25 with the biosculpter alone.

[Wraith_Magus]

The benefits are subtle and hard to quantify compared to the hard costs of the superchargers themselves. I personally just take it as the downside of an otherwise strong ideology for balance purposes.

So far as the size works, I tend to have 4-tile-wide personal rooms for my unmarried pawns, and I just build the neural superchargers so that the activation tile is the spot right in front of their bedroom door.

So far as the power requirements go, chemfuel reactors are highly scalable. (There are also mods like Vanilla Furniture Extended - Power that make some more efficient power plants researchable.) In my current cave base where I'm going for a human primacy transhuman tunneler ideology, I'm running on caves of nutrifungus I can turn into nutrient paste I can stockpile and feed to boomalopes at high efficiency that can be milked for chemfuel that can power chemfuel generators. It does take some delivery time from pawns, but you can run absolute ♥♥♥♥-tons of power this way. (And Vanilla Nutrient Paste Expanded also has a nutrient paste piping system that makes this take less hauling time, too...)

[kennygnu]

Chemfuel generators are amazing as well.

I just personally don't see why Neural Superchargers and Sleep Accelerators even needed to be added to the game. With bionics and xenogenes you can live out your wildest body modder dreams and never run out of things to enhance in your pawns.

I already felt the need to add the Neural Supercharger Ownership mod because I chose to install them in my pawns' bedrooms. When I saw the power drain I immediately toggled the power off on all of them, setting me back to square one until I can find ways to obtain some 4k excess power in my grid.

[Cheet4h]

Originally posted by Monty:

I usually don't play transhumanists for this reason, the neural supercharging is a PITA to set up and age reversal is a constant drag, they don't have enough of an effect to justify the room resizing and resource expense.
Chronography and tea make them feel pretty redundant.

The neat thing is that Chronophagy also resolves their desire for age reversal. And far more efficiently at that.
Only drawback is that you need a bad ritual spot for your 25yo pawns so you don't reverse their age all the way down to 13.

[Red Bat]

Once you can fabricate components, building more power isn't a huge issue. You can have a room filled with neural superchargers somewhere and you'll basically just pay extra food for a multiplicative bonus. Same with the sleep accelerators, but it's a smaller input for a bigger output in that case.

Worth pointing out that the transhumanism meme is largely a tradeoff of midgame struggle for lategame and a little early game benefit. You are expected to do a monsterous amount of setup in exchange for eventually getting a minor constant benefit. I'm pretty sure it's meant to be on the whole harder. I've had colonies where I turned everything into a positive and that feels awesome, but for the most part it's meant to be yet another annoying thing you have to deal with.

Also worth pointing out that the memes aren't meant to be balanced. Obviously some of them like supremacist and high life have some pretty big benefits, while others like animal personhood and nudism are largely meant to make the game harder.

[Astasia]

Weird, I usually try to get a transhumanist recruit in my colony most games to build superchargers even in my non-transhumanist runs. 10% consciousness and 25% extra learning is just so good, especially for something that just costs a handful of steel. I use toxifier generators to power them, which are also functionally free (just the upfront steel again) and 0 hassle if you place them correctly (it takes 20 years for a toxifier generator to run out of non-polluted tiles, my games never last that long).

The transhumanist meme encourages me to build them sooner rather than later, but they are always worth having regardless of the mood effect.

[MadArtillery]

Originally posted by Red Bat:

Also worth pointing out that the memes aren't meant to be balanced. Obviously some of them like supremacist and high life have some pretty big benefits, while others like animal personhood and nudism are largely meant to make the game harder. Is symbol burning really worth a meme slot?

Pretending nudism is even worth existing as a meme as it is a litteral do nothing you shouldn't even run in nudist colonies. Symbol burning and forcing a precept you can already take without it anyway and will take regardless if you want a nudist colony. Wow, such game design, so "high impact." Ideology is just a poorly made mess with little thought put into it.

Transhumanist is great though because it was actually designed to be something. I really like the mix of convient and inconvenient aspects of transhumanist that help make a run unique. High life and Tree Connection are both interesting too. Supremacist I think they forgot what it was supposed to be as it's just raider but without a downside. Copy paste job swapping raiding required but charity optional for raid optional but charity disallowed.

Originally posted by kennygnu:

Chemfuel generators are amazing as well.

I just personally don't see why Neural Superchargers and Sleep Accelerators even needed to be added to the game. With bionics and xenogenes you can live out your wildest body modder dreams and never run out of things to enhance in your pawns.

I already felt the need to add the Neural Supercharger Ownership mod because I chose to install them in my pawns' bedrooms. When I saw the power drain I immediately toggled the power off on all of them, setting me back to square one until I can find ways to obtain some 4k excess power in my grid.

You don't like sleep accelerators either!?!?! But less sleep! Every second not wasted laying on their ass is another second working. Worth noting ideology came out way before biotech or anomaly so while genes are super cool for transhumanism it is backward compatibility not designed around them. Biosculptors have always been mediocre though.

[HunterSilver]

I think of consciousness as kind of a god-stat. I will do some absolutely deranged things to get as much of it as possible.

Compared to arresting a Highmate imperial, effectively starting a 2 year long war with her faction, and spending that time harvesting her genes to implant everyone with Psychic Bonding, Neural Superchargers are a cheap source of +Max Consciousness.

Steel, components, food, and power are pretty plentiful at all stages of the game if you plan for them.

[Twilight]

Originally posted by Cheet4h:

The neat thing is that Chronophagy also resolves their desire for age reversal. And far more efficiently at that.
Only drawback is that you need a bad ritual spot for your 25yo pawns so you don't reverse their age all the way down to 13.

I've been on the look out for a mod that caps Chronophagy to 20 years, rather than juggling void sculptures\beacons\etc to tune the outcome.

[HunterSilver]

Originally posted by Twilight:

I've been on the look out for a mod that caps Chronophagy to 20 years, rather than juggling void sculptures\beacons\etc to tune the outcome.

Just have two separate ritual rooms. One room with no bonuses that will drain 5~11 years depending on the number of participants. Then another fully equipped room that will drain 12~23 years. Or more depending on the psychic sensitivity of the Invoker.

[Deadoon]

Originally posted by Cheet4h:

The neat thing is that Chronophagy also resolves their desire for age reversal. And far more efficiently at that.
Only drawback is that you need a bad ritual spot for your 25yo pawns so you don't reverse their age all the way down to 13.

Originally posted by HunterSilver:

Originally posted by Twilight:

I've been on the look out for a mod that caps Chronophagy to 20 years, rather than juggling void sculptures\beacons\etc to tune the outcome.

Just have two separate ritual rooms. One room with no bonuses that will drain 5~11 years depending on the number of participants. Then another fully equipped room that will drain 12~23 years. Or more depending on the psychic sensitivity of the Invoker.

Place two stockpile zones under the statue locations with only the shard beacons set for one, and the sculptures for the other. 1 being 1x4 and the other being 1x6 for all the boosters.
When you need to downgrade, you just select uninstall, when you need to upgrade, click the ones needed and install one at a time.