Rethinking Transcendence

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MatGB
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Rethinking Transcendence

#1 Post by MatGB »

from another thread
LGM-Doyle wrote: Transcendence is the cyborg body. Break the Transcendence win tech into a series of techs that modify all of the species in your empire into a common proto-transcendent species. When an empire transcends all of their citizens disappear, leaving abandoned planets. Having the only techs that change species solely on the path to transcendence is an acceptable complexity increase.

Make the pre-transcendent techs that change species not uniformly good. This balances these techs, makes the Transcendence win progress visible to other civilizations and forces interaction of the different win conditions.

For example.

Pre Transcendence: Withdraw ++ Research -- Supply
Pre-Transcedence: Reflect ++ Research -- Industry

Lastly, make Transcendence require a Transcendence Beacon and a contiguous empire. It allows empires with a conquest goal to interact with empires trying to transcend, by isolating planets from the Transendence Beacon. Of course, you could just exterminate your own population, but who would do that.
I, currently, find the very idea of a transcendence victory incredibly dull, it basically doesn't interest me at all and I've only ever acheived it by mistake (less likely to happen since it was made way more expensive).

I would like it if it required multiple stages that are a) slightly challenging gameplay wise and not just 'spend X research points' and b) disruptible by other players.

It should, for example, require that the empire has a Megalith, and a Sitrep should be issued to all players saying you've built one, and where it is. If we're going to have a 'tech victory' option, then make it interesting.
Mat Bowles

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The Silent One
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Re: Rethinking Transcendence

#2 Post by The Silent One »

MatGB wrote:It should, for example, require that the empire has a Megalith, and a Sitrep should be issued to all players saying you've built one, and where it is.
That's exactly how I would do it. Maybe (alternatively) it could be a "doomsday weapon" victory condition. If you've built it, (and that would have required a huge amount of production, so it's not just a science victory) it takes ~20-50 turns to be activated, giving the other players some time to invade and stop you. While the weapon is being activated, the other players will be constantly reminded how long until they're wiped off the face of the universe, keeping them aware they need to take action...
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dbenage-cx
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Re: Rethinking Transcendence

#3 Post by dbenage-cx »

Gradually abandoning planets, ending up with just your homeworld before transcending sounds hilariously challenging.

The Megalith version will be difficult to disrupt, unless it is reset by some condition closer to your borders.

Doomsday seems like a good additional victory, especially for xenophobic races (theme wise).
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spikethehobbit
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Re: Rethinking Transcendence

#4 Post by spikethehobbit »

Gradual abandonment does sound interesting. The challenge there is that all of your colonies become outposts, reducing production and leaving you more vulnerable to invasion. Limiting the rate that population can transcend gives enemies more time break through to capture/destroy the Megalith. The capital would need to transcend last.
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Krikkitone
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Re: Rethinking Transcendence

#5 Post by Krikkitone »

I like the idea of a "proto-transcendence" species engineering...

Complete it and all of your worlds are on a timer to be converted to that proto-transcendant species... this would mean that any planets you took After the project finished would slow you down.

The proto-Transcendant species would have to have
0 pop growth rate (so that you Could gradually remove them... and to act as an additional penalty)
and some penalties

Then when the megalith is built, it removes X proto-Transcendant population from your connected empire (each world that you have drops by colony pop*X/(pop of connected empire-Megalith pop/2).. Megalith site only drops by 1/2 of that.

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Re: Rethinking Transcendence

#6 Post by spikethehobbit »

I would require a Megalith to begin conversion, and if it is lost/destroyed, you lose all converted population. If that was everybody, you just lost the game.
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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Rethinking Transcendence

#7 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Some ideas:
-Transcending population removes that population from a planet
-The rate at which population can transcend is limited by an empire's research output (scaled down appropriately... so maybe per 100 RP -> 1 population / turn can transcend)
-Transcendence would only occur on planets set to transcendence focus (which would have various penalties to use, or just give no benefits like other focus settings would), with the RP limit split evenly amongst transcendence focus planets.
--Don't necessarily need to "spend" the RP, ie. prevent it from being used for tech research, but that's also possible.
-Different species have different costs per population to transcend.
--Species engineering / changing species on a planet would let a player make it easier to transcend their population.
--Easy-transcender species would be generally useless otherwise, and broadcasting their presence to all other empires.
-Empires need to transcend some minimum amount of population to win. This might be at least as much as the current total population of the galaxy plus twice the total transcended population of all other empires combined.
-There are thus a few different strategies for making transcendence work...
--Exterminating population (other empires' or ones own) to lower the number transcendend required to win
--Converting ones population into species that make it easier to transcend (but are otherwise less useful)
--Boosting research output to increase the rate of transcendence
-And some strategies for preventing transcendence wins...
--Growing ones own population to raise the threshold required for other empires
--Exterminating other empires' planets that have easy-transcendence species on them
--Sabotaging other empires' research output with espionage
--Transcending some of your own population to block the win (need at least 2x more than other empires combined, as above)
-Perhaps transcended population can also be spent, as a form of "god points" to do stuff, instead of being used to win.
--Having a Transcendence Temple building could let an empire spend some accumulated transcended population to do stuff
--Could supernovas or get big boosts of influence or similar, without need to get a ship into position
--Could grant visibility everywhere above some threshold of transcended population, or just increase the visibility range of everything an empire owns proportional to transcended population

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matt474
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Re: Rethinking Transcendence

#8 Post by matt474 »

I think that before thinking about how to transcend, we need to first think about what transcendence is. It looks like a lot of people are viewing it as leaving the universe and becoming disinterested in it. This appears to me to be a method of quitting rather than achieving victory. Transcending should require the population to give up physical form and become something more, but there needs to be more for it to be a transcendence victory and not just transcendence.

Transcendence should be a way to achieve victory, rather than being a form of victory by itself. Before an empire transcends, they should already know and understand all life in the universe. This version of transcendence would probably be a type of diplomatic/exploration victory, with the empire sending out diplomats and citizens out to other planets to learn about the other civilizations. The empire may also need to find and study a few specials to transcend as well.

After understanding all life, the citizens of the empire will transcend, and see everything in the galaxy. Transcending will also improve the telepathic abilities of all species, allowing them know what any being in the galaxy is thinking. After a certain number of citizens transcend, then they will see everything, know everything, understand everything, and become a god.

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labgnome
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Re: Rethinking Transcendence

#9 Post by labgnome »

So apparently I missed this thread when I was going over the board when I came back. I like the thoughts here and I have a couple of my own.

Firstly: this seems similar to my thoughts on Simularicrons especially the idea that they might work as a tech. More recently I'd been thinking about them again, and thinking that to simulate their population growth via mind-uploading that they would decrease the (non exobot) populations of surrounding planets in your empire, while also increasing happiness. So that would fit nicely into the whole "transitional form" to the transcendence victory. Potentially if we went this rout, we could require that only once the Simularicrons had depleted all surrounding planets of population could they fully "transcend" to a completely new level of existence.

Secondly in missing this I started my own thread, apparently having very similar ideas. There was an older thread where the idea of post-transcendence land-rush came from, and that's where a lot of my ideas for victory effect came from. I will say I like the "removes the player" idea for transcendence as it's a "first one out" kind of victory, as opposed to "last one standing" which we currently have.
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