by Eladrin Hello again! The Machine Age will be arriving on Tuesday, May 7th, and is available for pre-purchase on its own or as part of Stellaris: Season 08. Stellaris: Season 08 includes all of this years major Stellaris releases at a 20% discount, plus includes the Rick the Cube machine portrait as an immediate unlock. I do a quick rundown of the things that are in it in this video: [previewyoutube=Pxelov-12_M;full][/previewyoutube] Today were going to look at the new Become the Crisis path, Cosmogenesis.

Becoming the Crisis

Back in Nemesis, we introduced the Become the Crisis Ascension Perk, which let an empire choose to embrace their darkest impulses, manipulating and concentrating fluctuations in the Shroud created by horrific acts in a bid to ascend to a higher existence. That Crisis, now renamed Galactic Nemesis, accumulated a resource called Menace by committing evil deeds in order to advance through its crisis path. Cosmogenesis has a bit of a different philosophy. Where the Galactic Nemesis operates through explicit malice, intentionally attempting to maximize the amount of suffering they can cause, an empire following the path of Cosmogenesis is more of a crisis to the galaxy due to callous indifference while pursuing what is theoretically a more noble cause.
Cosmogenesis can be selected as your fourth Ascension Perk. (In 3.12, Galactic Nemesis will also be moved to become available as a fourth perk.) Like Galactic Nemesis, you cannot take it if you are Custodian or Emperor, or are not independent. Unlike the previous crisis path, however, this one is not ethics locked. Even a Xenophile Pacifist can delude themselves into thinking that a small amount of possible, unintentional suffering now may be a worthwhile sacrifice for a better future.
Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. Galactic Nemesis dealt with quantity over quality. Cosmogenesis empires are the opposite. They seek the secrets of the Fallen Empires, desiring to reach the power they had in their prime.

Some of the Crisis Perks. One of the shortcuts you can use to get there is the Synaptic Lathe. A powerful research facility, it harnesses the power of minds to compute and store data, with the slight downside of burning them out over time. It can be upgraded twice, and uses a simplified variant of the planet interface.
Yes, you can (and should) Ascend the Lathe The districts unlock building slots, and either increase Research or Advanced Logic generated by the Neural Chips. The buildings can significantly modify many aspects of the Synaptic Lathe, whether it be Synaptic Preservers that reduce the burnout rate of Neural Chips, Neural Stabilizers that keep the Chips content and less rebellious, or even Synaptic Overclockers which will increase the effectiveness of the Neural Chips but burn them out much more quickly. The more Neural Chips you have contained within the Lathe, the more effective it becomes, as every chip improves the output of every other chip, resulting in a nonlinear productivity growth curve but make sure that there is always pops for the lathe to process, or risk seeing it break down for lack of suitable components.
A brief overview of the Synaptic Lathe To streamline the process of recruiting volunteers for the Synaptic Lathe, you can set species to use the Synaptic Service purge type, which will automatically resettle pops to the Lathe over time.
Service Guarantees Citizensh... Actually, Never Mind. At Rank 4, youll gain the ability to experiment upon reality through your Applied Infinity Theses. These allow you to attempt to make improvements on a stubborn reality, which can have galactic or localized effects. Sometimes these go well
For our next experiment, lets round pi to 3. Itll make calculations so much easier. But other times things dont go quite as planned, and the simple folk from other empires that just dont understand may get upset.
At least we still learned something! Frustratingly, reality is resilient, and does not take kindly to adjustment. But the Infinity Sphere has been nice enough to provide a potential solution. A new universe would be much more malleable than this ancient one that is stuck in its ways.
Once the Horizon Needle is completed, the Exodus begins. Its time to embark the people from your colonies onto the ship, and go into a bold new world.
Should you succeed, a perfect new universe will be created to your specifications, and your people will have endless and true understanding. Based on some of the choices you make during the Exodus, there are several endings to your journey.
Oh, what happens to this universe? Thats not really your problem anymore at that point, is it? It doesnt all explode, if thats what youre asking. That would be a terrible, senseless waste. (Okay, parts do, but thats really just collateral damage.)

Every end is a new beginning.

The aftereffects of your final experiment will ripple across the galaxy, causing significant problems for those that were left behind. A control group that elects to stay behind and observe from your former empire will protect itself well. The rest of the galaxy isnt quite as prepared.
Their grammar was also damaged in the time stop. With the ability to select a new empire to continue the game after losing the game (or winning, in this case), weve chosen to let you continue to explore the fate of the universe after the Cosmogenesis empire completes its mad goal. Your old empire will remain in the game as a true Fallen Empire.

Multiplayer Resync

Another feature were adding in the 3.12 Andromeda release is a Multiplayer Resync button. This button, as the name suggests, resyncs a game to hopefully allow you to continue if an Out of Sync error occurs. It wont always solve the issues, but when it does, itll save you some time as youll no longer have to quit and rehost the game.
Normally a reason for the Out of Sync is listed, but I forced the desync so nothing is actually wrong.
Transferring data!

Next Week

The Machine Age is getting close! Next week will be the first Art of The Machine Age dev diary. The artists have so much to show that theyll have another one post-release. See you then!