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.