An argument for Ascension tech being a progressive research rather than an on/off research

The step between Space stage and Ascended Stage has been discussed as an “Ascension Gate”, with an associated research that unlocks the next stage, granting the player access to all the previous stages in a god-game mode.

There has been talk of building up to that final stage, and I’d like to throw in some design analysis…

Rather than unlock ‘godmode’ for every stage instantly all at once with one technology (even a difficult to research one), it might be better to unlock godmode for each stage in sequence, and in fact, even open up that path much earlier.

For example, in the Real World™, humanity is already starting to unlock ‘godmode’ for the single-cell microscopic stage only a few short decades after unlocking the space age (even before unlocking their first colony ship!) thanks to the technological effective-world-wonder: The Human Genome Project. However, humanity is still a LONG way from unlocking what a galactic ascension-gate level tech would look like.

As such, I suggest the ascension gate be its entire own line of research achievements, each requiring ‘world wonder’ level research experiments, rather than simply a gimmicky deus-ex-machina research: an organic piece-by-piece unlock through gameplay rather than an all-or-nothing godmode by flipping a switch.

This has the advantage of finding races at different levels along this research path, further along or less along than the player, creating a more dynamic an interesting galaxy. Imagine (using Star Trek examples) encountering a species that has almost completed the research line, and are near-god-like, like the Q from Next Gen, but toned down further you still get intimidating and powerful groups like the Gardender from Voyager or the Travellers from Prodigy. Further, there could be policies that make progression difficult like the Federation’s ban on self-genetic engineering, that could prevent achieving the macroscopic ascension tech from being acheived.

In short, breaking the ascension tech into its component pieces of a godmode instead of an all-or-nothing could greatly enhance gameplay.

The reason I raise this topic now, is because by doing this, the beginnings of researching ascension tech could start coming into play much earlier. Heck, animal husbandry, in a way, is the beginning of unlocking ascension tech of the macroscopic life (although not its success), meaning the ascension should start being considered at much earlier stages, which would build hype for the fully completed ascension technology much later on.

For example, in the early tribal eras of the game, unlocking animal husbandry could give a “a piece of the path of ascension achieved” notification, which starts raising interest in ascension. At the civilization stage, completing the human genome project equivilent could unlock an “ascension gate” screen, showing all the parts of the metaphorical ‘gate’ to be unlocked when granting the player access to the single-cell editor. And we could even hint as far back as the single cell stage by having an ‘artificial life’ tag visible on the rare single-celled lifeform, and even on the game creation screen, where instead of just “Hydrothermal Vents”, “Panspermia”, and “Warm little pond” as options, we can have a greyed-out “Created by a progenitor species” that’s only unlocked account-wide once the player has unlocked in-game the single-cell ascension tech (that’d let them choose starting biome and have unlimited evolution points), with later ascension techs unlocking ability to start in later stages with free-builds as well.

It’s not the same at all. I think it is an interesting idea (and sort of been discussed before in terms of bioengineering) that you get more powers to interact with earlier stages as you progress in the game. And this will probably end up being on the official roadmap for one of the strategy stages once we get that far.

But I absolutely think that ascension has to be a huge jump cutoff that is officially the end of the game. We need to have a clear end to the game and watering down ascension will ruin that.

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Hmm… I was thinking from a more game-flow perspective than and end-of-game completion, but maybe we can have our cake and eat it, too.

Going to gaining god-mode on a galactic scale from just a planetary scale would still be a massive jump, and rolling credits at that point would make that it’s the ending pretty clear, too.

Though if we want to make that cutoff more dramatic, here’s an option:

Attaining godlike power over a planet in one of your own solar systems really isn’t going to affect most alien empires (so basically ascension tech for everything up through the planetary level could likely be safely ignored by alien species.) But once you start hitting prereqs for galactic ascension tech, it could trigger a war. Heck, we could also flip the coin on that one. Maybe an early tech in the interstellar phase of the space stage would be developing a research to detect if another race is developing galactic ascension tech, and a different stellar empire gaining galactic ascension is a lose condition. This turns it into a (pardon the pun) a space race. All sufficiently advanced interstellar alien empires would attack any empire (including the player’s) attempting galactic ascension, but also have reason to (prepare to) pursue it themselves.

This has multiple gameplay benefits on top of it:

  1. It instills the magnitude of value of the galactic ascension tech.
  2. It causes multiple win-conditions organically (galactic conquest wins because it makes it so noone can stop you doing ascension tech, technology rush wins because it gets you ascension tech, hyper-diplomacy wins because it keeps people from attacking you while you research ascension tech, non-conventional organically created win-conditions happen because… they let you get away with researching ascension tech.)
  3. Creates a difficulty ramp for end game. Having all the known galaxy turn on you except for maybe your most trusted allied empires (the ones who already see you as god-like and wouldn’t mind you gaining godlike power), definitely makes the game much harder, and encourages multiple attempts. Further, as an option, every attempt at galactic ascension tech could permanently increase those empires distrust of you, even if they destroy your ascension tech research, encouraging a more tactical approach. (Maybe you hunt down and destroy each empire that stopped you, removing your attempt from galactic memory, or maybe you try to create one super-alliance so ascension includes them in it next time, for examples.)
  4. The difficult ramp at end of game and the relative calm that would come once the tech is complete would also signal the end game scenario. We could even have a series of messages from advisors noting changes, such as, “We have taken the liberty of erasing knowledge of our existence from all of our enemies.” and having all previously-attacking enemy spacecraft return to their home ports.
  5. Gives a mid-space-stage reason to meet other empires (and a method to meet ones you wouldn’t normally otherwise if they’re blocked due to another empire in the way). If you get notice of ascension tech research, multiple alien empires could ask you to ‘team up’ for the express purpose of joining them on an assault on a more powerful empire nearing ascension. It gives an introduction to galactic politics, and also brings together empires in a way that encourages future interaction.
  6. It gives a great excuse to litter the galaxy with ruins. Civlization games have always been a bit wonky with finding ‘advanced technology in ruins’, without any good reason. This, however, gives a very solid in-game reason why you’d find advanced technology in ruins: advanced civilizations that get too close to ascension but can’t achieve it regularly are destroyed. This would also create a barrier to galactic ascension tech (its what was targeted, so you’re not going to find it in ruins unlike everything else), but it’d also allow build up towards end-game (abandoned documents would likely mention ascension tech, since it’d be the big topic at the time of the the ascension war that ended that particular empire).
  7. As a result of the previous, once we get to the galactic stage, the game now revolves around galactic ascension tech (getting it and preventing others from getting it, ruins about it, inability to trade for it or or discover it from ruins, requiring overwhelming ability in some way to pull it of) make actually getting it feel final, while also preventing it from just being the mindless wandering that was in Spore: there is goal, purpose, and threat.
  8. It also drastically expands replayability. Playing in a galaxy with only your empire vs 2 empires (yours and one other) vs 20 empires vs 1k empires is no longer just an Easy → Hard scale. More empires means more allies to prevent lose condition, but more opposition to get win condition. Empire count drastically changes game-play style. A 2-empire game… if you notice the other empire researching ascension, you’re screwed if you don’t personally stop them. But in 1k empires, you can largely ignore the message as some other closer and stronger empire will probably deal with it.

Another endgame signal we could include is ‘cleanup’ options. For example, what to do with your empire that your empire’s residents no longer need? Do you give it to another group (such as an uplifted species part of your empire, giving it to one-time allies), just leave it as abandoned ruins, do you remove it from existence to avoid polluting the cultures of other empires, or do you leave it to an anti-ascension faction of your empire? It emphasizes that ‘you’re no longer part of the game, you’re now above the game.’

Also, at that point, are we the only ascended empire, or are there others?

If the latter, what does that interaction look like? Do they just have a note from previous ascenders from the same galaxy saying, “We’re done with this galaxy, bored now, have fun with it to whoever ascends next!”

Or is there some goal afterwards, turning the god mode to have a puzzle game element like, “Oh, hey, looks like your galaxy finally had its ascension moment. We’re the ascended empire from this galaxy way over here… we’re trying to stop the heat death of the universe now… if you want to help, no pressure, try to achieve X, Y, or Z in your galaxy. No rush though, we have trillions of years, enjoy yourself!” as just a way to get some post-game achievements.

This to me just totally sounds like watering down the ascension concept, which I’m opposed to.
I think I’m done discussing this topic.

But if anyone else wants to jump in, feel free.

I do like the idea you presented for how progressing on the Ascension research will impact the game, and how it initiates the final conflict essentially. I also like the idea of having the Ascension research involving multiple steps, being a whole grouping of research/techs that unlock the next phase of development. I do agree with hhyyrylainen that a partially complete Ascension path or completed prerequisite techs do not take away from the magnitude of the final Ascension by having any partial Ascension usable. So, you could still require prerequisites like a total knowledge of biology/last tier bio-engineering tech for starting the final Ascension research but it wouldn’t unlock any literal ‘godmode’ features, only that which are ‘endgame’ ones. So, you could be required to exhaust each capstone of research (‘world wonder’ level research), such as Biology, Mathematics, Engineering, etc. or some other grouping, which would end up with the most advanced species possible without having done any actual ‘Ascension’ to ‘godmode’ in any partial way.

Part of this is that I think we are trying to limit as many things to realistic/hard sci-fi as we possibly can, with FTL travel being one of the main capitulations here that we think we might need for reasonable gameplay. So, we would kind of want to relegate the ‘godmode’ (ie. fantasy) elements to strictly after completing the game, at Ascension. (The Ascension gate itself and some of the stages of researching and building it would also be fantasy of course, but if this non-realism is only used as an explanation for building the Ascension gate itself then it seems to be acceptable)

I am also interested in figuring out more about what Ascension and the Ascension gate actually involve, as I haven’t really seen any more solid plan for it. Though we really don’t need to have this figured out until a much later point.
I was thinking of it more like the final/largest megaproject that you would accomplish by constructing the Ascension gate with an endgame level of resources. I was imagining this like some sort of wormhole gate created as an artificial black hole with some sci-fi excuse about it being stable to go into if created at a large enough level or something like that. Though I do like the idea of it involving a wide range of fields to be exhausted instead of solely brute-forcing a megaconstruction.

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Actually, that’s not really needed anymore. There was additional math into what was neccesarry to craft the Alcubierre drive. Although Alcubierre’s version required the energy-mass of Jupiter and exotic matter, later refinements by NASA and also by the University of Alabama eliminated the exotic matter requirement and lowered the energy-mass requirements. If that wasn’t enough, *we actually already have the first lab-created “warp bubble” * (fits more the physics idea of those words than the sci-fi version, to be fair).

A couple options to ‘harden’ the sci-fi for the ascension gate…

  1. Maybe we could play into crossing the fact it’s a video game with the simulation hypothesis, and they’re trying to hack the simulation. The big fear by other cultures, then, would be fear they’d ‘break the game’ or anger whoever is running the simulation.
  2. We could make it analogous to a ‘grey goo’ scenario, but using something on Planck scales. Research into the infinite slit paradox (Veritasium has a great video on it) shows us that reality takes the ‘lowest energy’ route from point A to point B not because it’s the only way, but because it ‘tries’ every way and then settles on the easiest path. We could have the ascension gate be encoding some process to inject command-response to everything touched by exploratory quantum movements, to adjust energy requirements & probability accordingly… in other words, like hypothetically hijacking google search crawlers to do website injection on every single website to hack it to show what you want, but doing so requires the abitlity to account for every potential system you come across, so a completed science would be absolutely neccesarry.
  3. Fake it with “Quantum”. Works for people selling overpriced water, Star Trek does it with “Time, Space, Thought”, just do something that sounds like it makes sense.

Each one gives a completely different attitude to the approach though, of how serious vs fantastic we want to be. Obviously there are more options, these are just examples.

I’ve discussed my own ideas on ascension before so I’ll try to summarize it the best I can.

  1. the possibility of ascension comes after having a ship go into the black hole at the center of the galaxy (hints would be dropped about this from other empires)

  2. creating the ascension gate would come with risks as some empires will attack you over it for various reasons. Some would provide aid though.

  3. ascending for the first time would unlock a sandbox mode so the player could direct multiple species in a more simulation like gameplay. (Something I would love as I am working on a book series that could have ecosystems fleshed out this way).

  4. it needs to be more of an accomplishment than just, hey here is a staff with limited uses. Yes the sandbox mode would be unlocked the first time around, but if we added a theivepedia online that auto uploaded ascended races, that would help to create a hall of fame of sorts for players every time they ascend a race. (I haven’t mentioned this prior so thought I would now)

An advantage of #4, is if it recorded their tree of life and cultural development from start to finish, that’d also give us a pretty good list to successful pathways to populate species from.

Spore had just an “upload this” system which resulted in a lot of nonsense creatures populating people’s galaxies. Populating with exclusively ones from successful playthroughs dampens a lot of that (obviously we’d have to limit it to a reward for just un-modded games.)

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Very true. Plus if we had that info we could add more empires players could encounter in the space stage from among ascended species

You just suggested the Spore system of downloading species made by other players into a playthrough??

That concept is patented until 2027-12-31:

Of course it is.

I will say though that we’ll likely want to do playthroughs as devs up to different stages so we can use that for the non-player empires people encounter. Even so that will likely happen well after 2027 so here’s hoping that copyright isn’t renewed

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There are some ways that it could make sense to unlock a boosted version of a run for earlier stages once you reach particular points within the Space Stage. Once you have the tech to send peopled missions to colonise planets in unexplored solar systems without guidance, you could instead send automated missions to colonise barren planets with microbes. If you also have unlocked advanced genetic engineering tech, you could conceivably create life with boosted evolution. This could be represented by allowing the player to start a new game with an ascension-level upgrade, but just for the microbe stage. Other techs could allow extending this bonus to further game stages - mastery of cell division unlocking Multicell, and mastery of embriology unlocking Macroscopic, perhaps.

If the player could find themself in a position where advancement was blocked, or if they were wiped out in Space Stage, maybe it could be a worthwhile alternative to simply giving up or ‘Game Over’. But it would be limited in available benefits compared to Ascension.

I think such achievements in game definitely should be celebrated. It would feel good to get a message to say that your species had achieved mastery over microbial lifeforms, for instance. But gaining this type of technology and science would still not be the same as transcending physical reality. And I don’t think it really makes sense to say that these things are part of the ascension process.

Having civilizations reach a new level of conflict due to construction of the Gate makes perfect sense, akin to heightened global tensions due to creation of the atomic bomb. This seems to be the concensus on the issue. But I think that probably shouldn’t extend to before the ascension research has started, and that the tech probably shouldn’t even appear on the research screen until all the prerequisite tech has been researched.

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Especially with the research aspect of it that’s why it would be locked behind the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center. The player would have to send a ship inside after acquiring wormhole travel to initiate ascension technology appearing