I'm interested in this question (I THINK this is the right place on the forum for it)
We all know the game starts having problems as gameplay goes along...but in what sequence? when does it become unplayable? How long can a "game of aurora" theoretically last.
When I started my latest campaign I knew I wanted something with a really involved sweep of history and worldbuilding...it's quite extensive and I keep a notebook. I have been playing my current campaign for about 18 real-life months now. Also, I play often. I leave aurora running through gameplay cycles whenever I'm doing research or watching TV, often when I'm reading as well...so probably an average of an hour a day.
My game, with a conventional start, is in its 132nd year of play, I've discovered hundreds of systems, 2 large living alien civilizations, wrecks indicative of a 3rd, precursors, star swarms, and ruins in abundance. There are probably many civilizations I haven't discovered as well. Humanity controls 4 worlds with populations in the billions, more than a dozen outlying colonies with populations in the hundreds of millions, and has even spread to 2 independent colonies outside of controlled space. Our civilian lines are everywhere. I'm sure this can't be the biggest and longest-running game of aurora but it's gotta be up there.
what I'm wondering is: how long can I play? what's the longest anyone has done it? at some point, everything will come apart...but when and how?
Here's what I'm seeing roughly in the order it started to become a problem
#1: slowdown: everyone knows this is bad. Slowdown wasn't a problem for the first 50 years of my game, because I was confined to the sol system. As I spread out, it increased sharply, then leveled out. I've noticed no real change in slowdown since 2130 or so. I'm certain it's increased, but I think the discovery of alien civilizations doesn't slow the game as much as a well run human player will...the proliferation of commercial shipping in this area of the galaxy is mostly my doing. I'm keeping an eye on this.
#2: Interruption: interruption grows more and more frequent, the result of catastrophic NPR battles in the depths of space that are happening with alarming frequency. This is currently just annoying but I can forsee a time decades from now where it would make the game unplayable.
#3: error proliferation: every so often, the game drops something it shouldn't, and errors appear. These have a tendency to stick around. As the game goes on, I see more and more problems with creating teams and recovering survivors. I keep meticulous backups, but even this is not a permanent solution. eventually, everything will break in a manner I won't immediately notice.
#4: AI Incompetence: The AI is not (cannot) be run in a sustainable way...this would require capabilities far beyond what a normal programmer could program. As it stands, AI economies invariably crash due to a mineral shortage or incurring massive debt. I think I'm seeing far less activity in the systems of the alien race I'm allied with...I think the poor guy's run out of minerals to build new ships or something. Also, the AI is presumably not as good as a human player at picking up the pieces after suffering a setback. As aformentioned, I'm seeing frequent interruptions to suggest that someone, somewhere, is getting in a HUGE fight. When I see these interrupts, I can't help but think that every setback the AI suffers is near-permanent, and that I'm not gonna find anything out there but wrecks.
#5: AI (Tech) incompetence: When AI's are created, their tech far exceeds that of the player, we know this. However, the AI is fairly dumb and can't compete with even a low-level player at managing an economy or the research that comes with it. My biggest rivals in interstellar dominance have always been technologically inferior to me (though much more numerous) however, I've always been encouraged by, and wary of, other civilizations that have spawned out there in the blackness. Increasingly though I fear that by the time I reach these new rivals, I'll be able to run circles around their plasma fleets with my shiny new antimatter engines.
#6: Player incompetence: here's a fun one. As I continue to play, my space empire becomes increasingly unmanageable. You'd think that as time went on you'd solve problems like sporadic mineral shortages and a lack of safe maintenance berths for spacecraft...but that's not true. Every new mining world I develop requires more attention, more protection, et cetera. My spacecraft become ever bigger and require ever-more-resources (especially fuel). It takes my craft nearly a month to reach the borders of protected space. At a certain point, I can see myself sorta tearing my hair out that I forgot to end task force training for a detachment of missile cruisers around some distant world half-a-decade ago, and they've fallen apart..and I just give up.
Initial questions:
- what's the longest or largest game anyone has played? What issues did you encounter?
- the typical strategy when making hostile contact in this game is to blow it out of the sky and invade it, immediately. For various RP reasons i did not do that. Has anyone had a rivalry with an alien civilizations over decades and decades of time? How did it go?
- How long is an NPR "viable". I'm pretty sure there's at least one mighty space empire out there that spawned in the 2130s that I still haven't discovered in 2152. Will I ever see them?
