Ascension Stage

In a nutshell: This is the endgame where you can zoom about the galaxy as a metaphysical being, shaping and observing what you wish. It's been a long journey and you deserve it. Ascension is a key concept in Thrive, comparable to "winning the game" in other videogames. It is a state where a sentient organism is transformed to energy form by an Ascension Gate and thus it gets god-like powers, using the energy of the universe itself (essentially doing miracles for free). What Ascension does is that, provided you have researched God Tools research, there will be a new "God Tools" panel accessible anywhere in gameplay, allowing you to change anything you want. From creating whole solar systems to smallest bacteria, from destroying whole civilizations to possessing one of its members, all possible.

You will enter Ascension once your species goes through an Ascension Gate. We will likely want to show the game credits after the cutscene of entering the ascension stage. Once the credits are finished the player is thrown back into the game in the Ascension stage with a congratulatory message. To make this the last hurdle of the game the Ascension Gate will require a lot of research (including the above mentioned God Tools) and a ton of energy, multiple suns worth, to create and operate. Other potentially hostile species will have their last chance to attack the player here before the player gets infinite power and can just erase competing interstellar empires.