An Alternate Method of Ascension (alongside the current)

Hello! This is the first topic I have made aside from my introductory post, and I just wanted to talk about an idea I had about Ascension and how your species would achieve that. I think that the Ascension Gate works well for religious species, but what about very scientific species that don’t believe in anything supernatural, and think that the Ascension Gate will never be anything more than fiction? How would they achieve Ascension without the Ascension Gate? Well, I had an idea.

The species could build a Matrioshka Brain. A Matrioshka Brain is a theoretical megastructure built around a star, similar to a Dyson Swarm/Sphere that would convert as much energy from a star as possible into unimaginable amounts of computing power. The species, with their highly advanced technology, could use this machine to simulate a digital universe, where they could all upload their minds into the universe and rule over it like gods. Unimaginable amounts of time could pass in this digital universe in a fraction of a second in the real universe.

If you think this idea is good/bad, or want to share an idea, please do!

  • Matrioshka Brain Ascension is a good idea.
  • The current, single ascension method is good.

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Megastructures 10: Matrioshka Brains - YouTube - Video explaining the Matrioshka Brain by SFIA

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I think you misunderstand the idea of the ascension stage, it’s not religious ascension, it’s gaining enough power in the universe that you can control everything.

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Yeah, I think I must have misunderstood. I think it was probably this line from the Developer wiki that made me think it was more of a religious thing -

“This is the endgame where you can zoom about the galaxy as a metaphysical being

Thanks for informing me! Sorry for wasting your time.

(Wiki page - Ascension - Thrive Developer Wiki)

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I mean researching and powering the ascension gate should be a major undertaking. After all it’s the end of the game. So this is similar / maybe what we’ll do in terms of the research required. The concept of the ascension gate is that it is this thing that seems magic to us primitive humans but interstellar empires that can harness the power output of multiple stars and do research on a galactic scale, but they actually figure out how to build one and convert their species into beings of pure energy that can mess with the fabric of reality as they please. It’s not really a religious / spiritual thing at all.

Also real science is already surpassed way before the ascension gate is being built. Already early on in the space stage with FTL and other technologies we don’t have, will transition Thrive into a scifi game.

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But for how long I wonder?

Update: I mean how long will it take for us humans to reach that point (if we don’t die)?

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This is rather not ascension, but let’s say virtual power is a parody of ascension

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It would be cool if little Easter eggs surrounding one of your species which ascended would pop up in your future playthroughs. Maybe a religion starts in the society stage of your next world with allusions to your previous species, or maybe you can seed the galaxy with monuments or technology to provided bonuses to another save.

It always gets rightful criticism for a lack of continuity between stages, but one thing Spore did right is having those little moments which made you feel part of a larger galaxy. For example, that spaceship which visits you in the middle of creature/tribal/city stage.

That can add to the lore of a player’s gameplay in a significant way. Kind of like how in Halo, there was a species of extinct advanced aliens which inspired the religion of the alien groups you fight.

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This is kind of what I meant in a way. Not the species properly “ascending”, but them being able to achieve their own perfect utopian world where they could do whatever they wanted.

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wait, why would they think its fiction? since they’re a scientific species they will of course figure out that ascension might be possible, isn’t that right?

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They were thinking ‘Ascension’ as a religious kind of thing, especially because of ‘metaphysical’ being a word commonly used to describe that stage

They have since been told otherwise, look in above comments

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i know, but scientists disregarding something as fiction just because it seems supernatural doesn’t sound realistic

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No, they thought that the ascension was supernatural and religious, with no science or tech or whatever to back it up

It wasn’t that they thought scientists would ignore it because they thought it was magic, but because they (Dan54) thought it was religious and magical, without science.

That was what I got from their above posts and replies to clarification

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Thanks for clarifying this for others!

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