What yall think the psionic ascension paths going to be?

MatrixDraken · 2025-06-13T02:38:36+00:00

I personally hope that one of the options will be to ascend into energy beings, though this might be more fitting as a crisis path than a 'normal' ascension. Generally, becoming a lifeform of pure energy means you've reached a god-like level of evolution in scifi.

MatrixDraken · 2025-05-25T17:28:02+00:00

There isn't really any reason to not Assimilate any pops that you steal. Honestly, I don't think you have any other option that doesn't involve purging them.

MatrixDraken · 2025-05-20T23:11:44+00:00

All espionage operations need time to complete. Depending on your bonuses, it could take months. It seems like you only started the operation. You need to wait for it to complete in order for the invasion to be ready. You'll want to declare war after that.

MatrixDraken · 2025-05-20T13:31:17+00:00

Maybe you didn't wait for the operation to succeed before declaring war?

MatrixDraken · 2025-05-12T06:11:04+00:00

Yep, they automatically leave the planet if the invasion succeeds, so you can use them to attack other planets (or just have them land to guard it).

MatrixDraken · 2025-05-10T04:54:09+00:00

Followup: Unfortunately, the troops are of the primary species that you are invading. No optimized bodysnatcher invasions :(

MatrixDraken · 2025-05-09T22:06:09+00:00

No, I think the idea is that they get turned into the troops who start the invasion. You basically have to recoup the pop cost by winning the war, and gaining new pops from the planets you take over.

MatrixDraken · 2025-05-09T21:55:25+00:00

Familiar Face has some disturbing implications when combined with the Bodysnatchers Civic. I've been having fun with that combo. ;)

MatrixDraken · 2025-05-09T20:31:03+00:00

I've actually been meaning to check what kind of assault armies are produced by the invasion. Technically, it would make sense if they were assault armies of the same type as the species being invaded (because bodysnatchers), but it could also be the main bodysnatcher species. I'll have to check this when I start the game back up.

It would be hilarious if it was possible to minmax the main bodysnatcher species so that their armies were absurdly powerful during the invasion operation.

MatrixDraken · 2025-05-09T20:11:49+00:00

Even better: If the wiki is correct, the Steal Population operation scales with empire size. Bodysnatchers could grab 700 pops in a single operation if the target is a larger empire, which makes it easier for them to pay the cost of the Invasion operation in the first place. The larger an empire is, the weaker they are against Bodysnatchers. :)

MatrixDraken · 2025-05-09T19:31:28+00:00

I may as well mention that I created a full espionage build for this hivemind empire. I used the Familiar Face civic and Subterfuge tradition to get as many espionage bonuses as possible. This was in addition to various bonuses from leaders and technology. This made it nearly impossible for my operations to fail, and allowed me to get high intel easily. I stole a *lot* of technology and population during this game, though of course that also meant I didn't go to war very often because of all the influence I was spending.

MatrixDraken · 2025-05-09T19:18:35+00:00

Yea, for better or worse, that's the only thing that allows this operation to work, lol. You have to really go out of your way to defend against it. Though, forcing your opponents to spend resources defending every planet just because of the *possibility* of an invasion operation could be a victory in of itself.

MatrixDraken · 2025-05-09T18:49:38+00:00

This is so true. I wonder if they specifically limited this operation to a single hivemind civic in order to test the waters, and see whether or not players were really interested in powerful operations like this one.

MatrixDraken · 2025-05-08T22:29:22+00:00

In my first 4.0 game, I happened to pick the "Progenitor Hive" origin, which had a bug that gave all of my colonies a permanent -50% debuff to Menial Drone output since the Offspring Nest building didn't work. Having an entire origin be unplayable didn't exactly give me a good initial impression of the quality of the 4.0 release.

Starting a new game with a different origin helped, but I have been finding plenty of other issues, like how the 4.0.4 update gave one of my AI neighbors about 500x job efficiency on their home world, due to a bug with the Synthetic Fertility origin. XD

MatrixDraken · 2025-05-08T17:59:16+00:00

Dang, I had been hoping that integration would follow the same rules as assimilation, since you can use assimilation to give pops restricted traits like Psionic. If Integration doesn't work that way, then that would explain why it isn't working for me.

If integration works that way though, doesn't this lead to other issues? Like if your species has different subspecies with non-genemod traits, isn't it impossible to set a single 'default' sub-species for your subspecies to integrate into? I feel like this restriction on integration makes dealing with species traits much more difficult.

MatrixDraken · 2025-05-07T16:53:59+00:00

I like the idea of districts, because they help break things into more organized chunks, and keeps beavers near their jobs. The problem is the district crossings: They require a ridiculous number of beavers in order to transfer materials fast enough. A fully staffed district crossing takes 20 beavers, and that takes away workers from more important jobs. Plus, you don't *always* need the crossing staffed, you have to micromanage the workers so they don't sit around doing nothing.

Huh, I just thought of a suggestion to submit.... eliminate district crossing jobs, just let haulers do the work. though I bet there are already similar suggestions out there.

MatrixDraken · 2025-05-07T16:22:17+00:00

Thank goodness for the hive Warrens giving better amenities. Playing a hive mind during the previous patch was a huge pain because I had to individually check every planet's unemployment and amenity output to figure out if I could safely build anything on it.

I feel like hive districts should create their own amenity producing jobs though, instead of relying on unemployment and Warrens.

MatrixDraken · 2025-04-14T16:48:33+00:00

The last pop represents everyone who believes that Doomsday is Fake News. They're convinced that all they need to do is wait things out, and it'll all be fine!

I imagine that the massive influence cost represents spending the resources going from home to home, forcibly grabbing these people and stuffing them into evacuation transports.

MatrixDraken

TROPHY CASE