Origin: Genesis Protocol

[Jin2188]

Design Doc Here:

Genesis Protocol Design Doc.docx

Ideas:
• Machine empire that uses Devotion to produce Research Points instead of Unity
• Ruler starts with the Conduit of Willpower trait, which converts Devotion into Research Points, Energy, Zro, and Astral Threads (if player owns Astral Planes).
• Start on a habitat with the tech to make more habitats, and gain penalties when colonizing non-artificial worlds
• Allows seeding Pre-FTL civilizations on worlds with a special megastructure, the Overseer Node, which produces Devotion based on the amount of Pre-FTL pops on the planet below.
• Pre-FTL pops produce extra Devotion if the planet is a Gaia World (they see it as their God favoring them)
• If one of the Pre-FTL civilizations under your control reaches the Space Age, they will become a special subject type with a special holding that produces Devotion for you, the Overlord
• Overseer Node lets you terraform planets. Uninhabitable planets are terraformed into a random habitable class, and habitable planets are terraformed into Gaia Worlds (special interaction with Azaryn, maybe?)
• New empire-unique building that can be built on your capital, that functions as a virtual afterlife, growing or assembling pops based on the primitive species on the planets under your control. Assembles Cyborg Pops if Driven Assimilator, otherwise grows Virtual pops, which produce Devotion, have Energy upkeep instead of food, and do not consume housing. Virtual pops cannot migrate or be resettled to other planets. (The idea is that the machine intelligence, being psionically adept to an extent, is taking the souls of recently deceased individuals from the Shroud, so that they can continue to be useful) This building has Devotion upkeep that scales based on the amount of primitive pops under your control.

[Elimdur]

• Ruler starts with the Conduit of Willpower trait

This one needs more info on what the trait is meant to do

• Allows seeding Pre-FTL civilizations on worlds with a Habitat Central Complex or special megastructure over it

I very much am in support for doing it with the central habitat complex instead of adding yet another megastructure, which we would have to create first.

• Observation Posts produce Devotion based on the amount of spiritualist pops on the planet
• Pre-FTL pops produce extra Devotion if the planet is a Gaia World (they see it as their God favoring them)
• Special decision on Habitat Central Complexes that lets you terraform the planet below. Uninhabitable planets are terraformed into a random habitable class, and habitable planets are terraformed into Gaia Worlds (special interaction with Azaryn, maybe?)

I'm not sure we have to go to the lengths of requiring the pops to have a specific ethic. Then we have to check whether overwrites are necessary for the observation post to produce a different resource. If so I would opt for having a special building on the habitat instead doing that. We could combine it with my idea of using a building line for terraforming the planet.

• my idea for this would be: after some thinking about this, central habitat placement is a tricky thing to make the ai understand. rather we can check for the presence of existing habitable worlds and that then opens up the ability to build our special buildings on the habitat. Problem in us requiring buildings means we make the limited available building slots even more limited, but on a positive note this adds something for the player to think about and plan for
• let us say you can build one observation building per ftl civilization in the system (this way we do not have to change the observation post mechanics) I think we can use variables for this
• then there is the thing about gaiaforming: i think we can add another building line similar to the idyllic bloom one. instead of affecting our colony on the habitat it would effect ALL habitable planets in the system, have high upkeep but also increasing the output of the other buildings - we need to have a reason to keep it in place or build it if you already have the planet gaia in the first place or terraformed otherwise

• If one of the Pre-FTL civilizations under your control reaches the Space Age, they will become a special subject type that produces Devotion for you, the Overlord

There is a big issue with this that we haven't seen yesterday:
When the primitives get spacefaring, they either get the system (INCLUDING your habitat) or are integrated into your empire. Both options are bad for us.
In this case it might be better to prevent them from reaching space age in the first place.

• The origin must block you from hostile interactions with primitives - no invasions, no bombardment, no exterminatus

[TranslatorIV]

In this case it might be better to prevent them from reaching space age in the first place.

Maybe a flavor event where we are notified when they reach the industrial age and use false rumors and superstitions to regress them back to medieval.

As for Gaiaforming. I like the idea of a building that terraforms system planets. Maybe have it so the building is required to maintain a non natural Gaia environment, and when it is gone all terraformed worlds(probably has a flag) regresses to a tomb world with a massive empire debuff because they failed their protocol.

[Elimdur]

Maybe a flavor event where we are notified when they reach the industrial age and use false rumors and superstitions to regress them back to medieval.

I think the least problematic and mechanically easiest way is for our special building to flag all present pre-ftl countries at machine age or above in the system with a permanent flag (the one they get after advancing an age which is normally just timed). then the building gets an effect for on destroy, which checks if there is no other building of the kind present to remove those flags - you would want the empires to get their vanilla behaviour back if some other empire conquers the system.

We would need an additional yearly pulse targeting all applicable countries to get those pre ftls that advance after the building is built too.

As for Gaiaforming. I like the idea of a building that terraforms system planets. Maybe have it so the building is required to maintain a non natural Gaia environment, and when it is gone all terraformed worlds(probably has a flag) regresses to a tomb world with a massive empire debuff because they failed their protocol.

In my opinion differentiating between planets which reached gaia state using our method and ones which got it a vanilla way is more bothersome than it is worth. On the otherhand the idyllic bloom way offers a bonus for having the building despite the gaia transformation process already being complete. I think this approach is easier to implement and understand for the player.

[TreeM4n]

There is a big issue with this that we haven't seen yesterday: When the primitives get spacefaring, they either get the system (INCLUDING your habitat) or are integrated into your empire. Both options are bad for us. In this case it might be better to prevent them from reaching space age in the first place.

The origin must block you from hostile interactions with primitives - no invasions, no bombardment, no exterminatus

We could also make something like the Dark Forest Origin, where advanced primitive just get to be a friendly country chilling in the system. I don't know if that takes a lot of effort to do. Or we could also make the story go: "The machines are not interested in FTL organics and try their everything to never let them reach that age".

We don't have to block those hostile interactions via overwrites, each one can have a ridiculous increase in price and high difficulty.

Also, 1 idea which I want to throw into the room. What if colonization triggers all of this, meaning: you build an expansive (custom) colony ship which upon landing triggers the construction of a habitat above and primitive seeding on the planet. You get the habitat for yourself and don't need to build an extra building. The primitives are already established.

[Elimdur]

We don't have to block those hostile interactions via overwrites, each one can have a ridiculous increase in price and high difficulty.

My hope is that we can lock someone with the origin into a specific pre-ftl policy in order to prevent those actions.

[TreeM4n]

My hope is that we can lock someone with the origin into a specific pre-ftl policy in order to prevent those actions.

Don't think you can lock policies. Only option I see for that route is a really long cooldown.

[TranslatorIV]

There is a big issue with this that we haven't seen yesterday: When the primitives get spacefaring, they either get the system (INCLUDING your habitat) or are integrated into your empire. Both options are bad for us. In this case it might be better to prevent them from reaching space age in the first place.

Apparently primitives use a progress bar situation pre_ftl_tech_progress_situation to advance tech which is shown in 03_AI_empire_situations.txt
country flag tech_frozen seems to give a progress multiplier of 0 I think. Maybe use this?

[Jin2188]

I'm not sure we have to go to the lengths of requiring the pops to have a specific ethic. Then we have to check whether overwrites are necessary for the observation post to produce a different resource. If so I would opt for having a special building on the habitat instead doing that. We could combine it with my idea of using a building line for terraforming the planet.

We should at least require them to not be materialist (and maybe not xenophobe either) because that wouldn't make since if they're supposed to be worshipping. I believe overwrites would be necessary to change production, but we could create a new observation mission that produces Devotion instead. Only problem is that we would have to block the other observation missions, which would require overwrites.

There is a big issue with this that we haven't seen yesterday: When the primitives get spacefaring, they either get the system (INCLUDING your habitat) or are integrated into your empire. Both options are bad for us. In this case it might be better to prevent them from reaching space age in the first place.

I like the idea of the special subject type and Pre-FTLs being able to reach the Space Age, so I have a solution:

We go with the custom megastructure (I know you guys are booing, but hear me out) which we can use vanilla assets for. This megastructure produces Devotion based on the amount of spiritualist or non-materialist pops on the planet below. When the Pre-FTL civ reaches the Space Age, destroy the megastructure via event and replace it with a custom holding that checks for the entire empire instead of just the one planet. (Think of it as the Kingdom of Heaven coming down to Earth, would make a good Revelations reference)

I still want to use habitats, since that gives more room for the machine pops as well. Maybe prevent habitats from being built in systems with habitable planets?

[TranslatorIV]

I'll just quickly make a megastructure to test if its feasible because I already have a mod that has the framework for such a thing.

edit: I just used the observation outpost entity. I managed to make the thing except for the whole when they reach the space age thing. Don't know how thats gonna work.

[Jin2188]

I managed to make the thing except for the whole when they reach the space age thing. Don't know how thats gonna work.

There are events that fire after they gain FTL. Maybe there's an on action?

[Jin2188]

I found an event called preftl.0, although I can't figure out where it fires from.

[Jin2188]

Okay, I think in order to make them be the special subject type once they get FTL, we may have to overwrite the preftl.1099 event. I know we want to avoid doing overwrites, but I doubt very many mods overwrite this specific event, so it should be pretty harmless.

[TranslatorIV]

If we want no overwrites, we could add a pulse event that checks for early space age primitives within borders and adds the tech_frozen flag to stop them from naturally progressing. Then advance them using another event that will turn them into a vassal nation. That is, if we were to go down this path. My suggestion is to just use the tech_frozen flag after seeding the planet and advancing their tech through things like espionage. They are being regulated after all.

[Jin2188]

Perhaps, but I don't want primitives at the very beginning of the Early Space Age to immediately gain FTL, so there should be a check on the progress towards FTL. It would make sense to freeze their technology since they're being regulated, but advancing their tech through espionage would probably take way too long.

[TranslatorIV]

We can make custom espionage events since we are actively trying to plant technology with them knowing something is out there. An espionage event that just triggers the next stage of technology instead of just adding progress seems short enough.