However, I can't actually draw, as my example above has so handily demonstrated. Firstly, the actual covenant node, once discovered, would have cool art on the map, immediately recognizable once unlocked. For now, let's discuss finding the covenants. We'll save that for a bit later in this section. Some are better than others (eater of worlds lol) and will probably need rebalancing. Reaching a Deal - Finding and using CovenantsĬovenants are powerful deals with even more powerful entities that carry a cost and a benefit. The End of the Cycle would lock off all other covenants, and the results would be much the same as Vanilla. Not as a node, but rather a direct offer that grows more insistent the more you sacrifice for power. The perfect mark for something like the End of the Cycle, maybe? Either through internally tracking some kind of karma/shroud stability and adding in "warning" events, the shroud would gradually twist and corrupt, until eventually, the End of the Cycle could manifest. This sounds simple enough - but think about the kind of empire that would stoop so low for power. Shrouded world terraforming/colonisation, anyone? Depending on the amount of Pops on the world, something truly incredible could happen. If you give an entire world unto the Shroud, the Shroud should reward you properly for such heinous acts, after all. Effects such as leader death, planet loss and pop sacrifice are moved here and given a reward more fitting the extent of the loss. Certain nodes would stand out as Dangerous, carrying either a chance of failure or a price beyond what is normal. This is purely for additional boons and benefits, such as Edicts, Espionage operations or perhaps even a Relic. Firstly: Everything the Shroud offers in the current game can be found without using any of the sacrifical choices. In the spirit of the fairly recent Necroids DLC, sacrificing pops for power can bring great rewards in the shroud. Power at a price and the End of the Cycle Furthermore, this also means that the Psionic components/Chosen One events are always somewhere on the map, and can always eventually be found, meaning that after enough time in the shroud any Psionic empire will be able to reap the full benefits of Psionic ascension as it stands. Combined with the cooldown system and making sure only one boon can be active at a time, the Shroud could be extremely useful for Psionic empires and give them a way to gain power without relying on pop assembly like the other two ascensions. However, the alternate price could be unity, any of the other sciences, a leader, a pop, anything - although there's always a path through to a covenant without sacrificing pops or leaders.Īs for the rewards, the current shroud boons, slightly toned down, could be used. Zro is always available as an option, but other empires without Zro can still transcend, and later nodes could provide a small Zro income regardless. The price of a node in this case is listed as a choice between Zro and society, because Zro needed a use that wasn't psionic shields. No more wasted time, no more needless casualties. Make the gain per day constant, a bit like shipbuilding, and make techs available that reduce the time required between breaches (optional.)īreaches are now the main component of Shroud Exploration, and unless the node SPECIFICALLY allows for a chance of failure, they will NEVER fail. You really do NOT need to know the "psychic energy" levels of your telepaths or whatever for this. Here's how a very VERY rough concept of the map would work.Īs you can see, instead of 10 year spaced seance dice rolls, you'd have a system that allows for faster breaches that scale much like Traditions do - my recommendation is an invisible resource. To this end, I have made a rough draft of the way this would work, using the above image. What if instead we could make it just as mysterious but also play better? Reduce RNG without reducing exploration. Within a short while, you'll find the shroud, and have to deal with contacting it every 10 years for a boon. So you've just freshly transcended and have become harmonious and powerful psychic beings. Also oh god change the devourer of worlds its just BAD. TL DR - A node based map of the shroud that is partially randomly generated for each ascending nation (alternately for each galaxy), progressing through an interconnected tree/web of boons that (mostly) have guaranteed effects, with each of the branches ending in a Covenant with one of the four Shroud Entities. So how does this translate to the Psionic Ascension? This is clearly meant to be starsystems at the breach point of the Aetherophasic engine, but the imagery and shroud decals on this put me in mind of a map of the Shroud.
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