What's the challenge?

[moody (OP)]

Good evening guys,

I am playing Dwarf Fortress quite a lot, and I love that after the first year or so you're getting your fortress raided.   It challenges me.   Is it similar to Aurora4x or is it much more relaxed? I am now about 40 years in, and I haven't had to do anything really in order to survive.   I just expand in my own time.  I'm still in my home solar system though.   I already had the Difficulty Modifier on 110%.   Does the extra 10% affect the game much? Is it fine to put it on 150% without breaking game mechanics or lore, or whatever? And would I be attacked if I just stay safely in my own solar system?

Thank you!

[vorpal+5]

There is a huge variability between 2 games, even with the same settings. You can have Earth glassed rapidly, or just expand endlessly, even with NPR defined from the start, depending if RNGesus decides they are xenophobic or not.
That said, the initial conditions are very very important. Define more NPR at start, and reduce by half the distance they spawn e.g.
The difficulty rating alters the NPR powers, but if they are not hostile, they are not hostile ...

[Llamageddon]

I'm pretty new to the game too, but from what I have seen the RNG can often give you a very forgiving game or a very difficult one. It sounds like sometimes it is worth going into SM mode to balance the difficulty yourself if you're not enjoying the challenge. I think you can make the NPR's more or less agressive by upping their expansion, xenophobia and militancy traits and/or spawn in a new one to give yourself a challenge.

[LoSboccacc]

what we need is some hand crafted scenarios with interesting setups straight in the db at download time

[Arwyn]

Its pretty random. I had a game just like the one you mentioned, 35 years before I ran into an NPR, and when I did, they werent very aggressive.

My current game is totally different. 5 years in, and I already have a hostile NPR just 4 jumps from Sol, and I am struggling to figure out how to push out into the next system and get a forward base setup with so little tech development. Totally different game.

[ZimRathbone]

The universe is generated as you go along, ii you specify 0 NPRs at start, and don't leave your home system then you can turtle forever. 

After the initial setup, all new systems are only generated at the time a race traverses a Jump Point for the 1st time, which may result in a connection to a new or existing system.  Spoilers are only generated by this process. I did once see a case where the player race explored a Jump point which connected to another JP in the same system.

If you have added one or more NPRs at the start, depending on their stats, they may explore away from the home system (and therefore may generate spoiler instances or additional NPRs), but I have seen cases where the initial NPR never moves beyond their home system.

[Garfunkel]

Just like your fort can be destroyed in Year 2 by an attack by a single werebear, your galactic empire can be destroyed by an aggressive NPR right next door that launches an immediate invasion. And just like it is possible to put the pop cap at 40 and never get invasions while you just peacefully build your fort in DF, it's possible to turtle in Sol (or your starting system) until TN minerals run out and never have to worry about invasions.

There are no fixed points in which NPR/spoiler would attack you. If you don't have any NPRs created at game start, they will only spawn in relation to your exploration. Same with spoilers, some of which are more aggressive than others but that discussion belongs to the Spoiler sub-forum.

Challenge is what you make of it - you can start with multiple NPRs at game start, put an extra NPR on Minerva or Pluto (after using SM mode to give them homeworld-level minerals) and tick all spoilers on while increasing difficulty to 150% and ticking the NPRs spawn more NPRS and also NPRs spawn spoilers boxes, plus put generation chances at 100% - that will make for a lively game.

As others said, plenty depends on the RNG though. We've had players explore 100+ systems for seven decades and never find anything - it's possible, just really rare. I once found a spoiler 2 jumps from Sol and they followed me back to Earth wiping everything out along the way.