Author Topic: Suggestion: Set NPR Cap / Toggle NPRs Exploration  (Read 2875 times)

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Offline Wolfius (OP)

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Suggestion: Set NPR Cap / Toggle NPRs Exploration
« on: June 22, 2014, 07:40:35 PM »
While it's always nice to see an expanding, living universe, there can, especially in long slow games, be a serious issue with bloat that the player will never see, and so adds little or nothing to their game.

An option to cap the maximum number of NPRs(you can just set NPR generation chance to zero, but unless you start with that and set the starting NPR count to the desired max total, you can't set the max number that can be in the game, and starting with multipule NPRs invites other slowdown issues), and/or an option to stop NPR exploration - or atleast prevent them from going through jump points that would generate new systems more than 1-3 jumps from home, so you still get pocket empires - would be a nice way to give players a way to mitigate that concern and prevent games from being brought to an unexpected end by AI curiousity.

An option to limit NPR generation to pre-TN civilizations might be nice, too. Especially for RPing. Give players more control over the scenario they want to play.
 

Offline IanD

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Re: Suggestion: Set NPR Cap / Toggle NPRs Exploration
« Reply #1 on: June 23, 2014, 09:02:14 AM »
Perhaps NPR exploration could be set to the range/radius of action of their survey ships from their nearest fuel dump. It still would not require the NPR to use fuel but would limit their exploration to the survey vessel's fuel storage/engine efficiency. With two (once three) NPRs starting on Earth I cannot keep up with their rate of exploration.
Ian
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Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Suggestion: Set NPR Cap / Toggle NPRs Exploration
« Reply #2 on: June 23, 2014, 10:42:25 AM »
Interesting idea. Each NPR could have a set number of systems beyond which it would not transit unexplored JPs, from 0 to unlimited but more likely in the 2-4 range. That might change given certain circumstances, such as being attacked or finding aliens in its home system. However, the NPR would transit jump gates.

Another option is to lower the chance of generating a new NPR if an NPR triggers system generation. So if player race is 30%, it might be 10% for NPR exploration.

 

Offline Haji

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Re: Suggestion: Set NPR Cap / Toggle NPRs Exploration
« Reply #3 on: June 23, 2014, 11:02:26 AM »
What I'd love to see (and what would take a lot of work) is pre-generated multi-stellar empires. Finding a polity occupying a single planet in a single system is fine, but getting old in a hurry and annoying when role-playing as I quickly run out ideas how to justify that.

Those empires wouldn't have to be huge, but finding an NPR with three to five well developed planets over six to ten systems would be great.
« Last Edit: June 23, 2014, 11:23:18 AM by Haji »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Suggestion: Set NPR Cap / Toggle NPRs Exploration
« Reply #4 on: June 23, 2014, 11:43:42 AM »
What I'd love to see (and what would take a lot of work) is pre-generated multi-stellar empires. Finding a polity occupying a single planet in a single system is fine, but getting old in a hurry and annoying when role-playing as I quickly run out ideas how to justify that.

Those empires wouldn't have to be huge, but finding an NPR with three to five well developed planets over six to ten systems would be great.

That is something I have considered as well. Finding the time is the problem :)
 

Offline Wolfius (OP)

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Re: Suggestion: Set NPR Cap / Toggle NPRs Exploration
« Reply #5 on: June 23, 2014, 08:27:57 PM »
Interesting idea. Each NPR could have a set number of systems beyond which it would not transit unexplored JPs, from 0 to unlimited but more likely in the 2-4 range. That might change given certain circumstances, such as being attacked or finding aliens in its home system. However, the NPR would transit jump gates.

Well, I specified system generation and not unexplored so the AI would be free to venture into systems generated by other NPRs or the PC for war and trade, but that idea is kinda neat in that two reasonably distant AI could have a prolonged border clash without one wiping out the other as they were too far away to bother with, just a contested system or two between them.

I'm mainly interested in players having the option to put the breaks on NPR exploration/expansion; I like long, slow games, and that means really cracking down on NPRs if I don't want them to lag out and die.


A middle ground between Pre-TN and Post-TN empires could also be interesting; Pre-FTL TN civilizations. Locked out of researching jump engine or jumpgate tech.

Spacefaring conventional empires would also add some nice flavour. Conventional engines, maybe some primitive weapons and sensors, luxury transports instead of cryo, etc.
 

Offline chrislocke2000

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Re: Suggestion: Set NPR Cap / Toggle NPRs Exploration
« Reply #6 on: June 24, 2014, 03:55:56 AM »
Really like the idea of range limits for NPRs to explore. Whilst the game really speeds up without any on I've found that I loose any sense of pressure when running a pre-TN game as I know there isn't a threat until I go exploring.

Setting a cap on range of jumps to explore from a populated system along with a lower cap on range of jump gates to build would be great.
 

Offline markus

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Re: Suggestion: Set NPR Cap / Toggle NPRs Exploration
« Reply #7 on: June 24, 2014, 05:43:57 AM »
By the way, what are the approximate chances that a newly discovered system will generate a new NPR by default?

I know the default rate is 30 percent per each suitable planet but I have no idea how many systems have suitable planets. So when I leave the default 30 percent, the actual NPR chance per system is about how much?
 

Offline Haji

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Re: Suggestion: Set NPR Cap / Toggle NPRs Exploration
« Reply #8 on: June 24, 2014, 06:15:31 AM »
By the way, what are the approximate chances that a newly discovered system will generate a new NPR by default?

I know the default rate is 30 percent per each suitable planet but I have no idea how many systems have suitable planets. So when I leave the default 30 percent, the actual NPR chance per system is about how much?

Low and getting lower. There is somewhere in the tool tips in the game a list of requirements that make the planet habitable, but to give you some idea: In my current game I have discovered well over two hundred systems, but only four had any NPRs and one of those were pre-TN civilization (no navy, no installations no nothing, just population). The chances will actually get lower with time as Steve updates the database, as he usually updates it with stars that have been missed - because they are that small. For example, recently he added a lot of brown dwarfs to the game and they have no chance whatsoever of having an NPR.

Of course the above is only true for people playing with real star systems. I don't know how the chances look like when you're playing random stars.
 

Offline Wolfius (OP)

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Re: Suggestion: Set NPR Cap / Toggle NPRs Exploration
« Reply #9 on: June 24, 2014, 06:39:28 AM »
Low and getting lower. There is somewhere in the tool tips in the game a list of requirements that make the planet habitable, but to give you some idea: In my current game I have discovered well over two hundred systems, but only four had any NPRs and one of those were pre-TN civilization (no navy, no installations no nothing, just population). The chances will actually get lower with time as Steve updates the database, as he usually updates it with stars that have been missed - because they are that small. For example, recently he added a lot of brown dwarfs to the game and they have no chance whatsoever of having an NPR.

Of course the above is only true for people playing with real star systems. I don't know how the chances look like when you're playing random stars.

On the other hand, I've had games where every jump point out of Sol generated a system with an NPR in it. The RNG is sufficently random that any one person's experiances are generally too small a sample to draw meaningful conclusions from, AFAICT. Especially with random stars.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Suggestion: Set NPR Cap / Toggle NPRs Exploration
« Reply #10 on: June 24, 2014, 07:11:56 AM »
I think this is one of the areas where game play should supersede realism. The game knows whether a jump point has been previously transited (and therefore links to another system), even though the NPR doesn't. So it would be possible to restrict NPRs from exploring unlinked jump points (outside a certain distance from their home system).

This is unrealistic in the sense the NPR wouldn't know which JPs were unlinked and therefore wouldn't be able to make that choice in reality. However, it adds quite a few gameplay benefits.

1) The total number of systems in the game is reduced
2) The number of NPRs generated by other NPRs is reduced
3) NPRs can still enter/explore previously generated systems so a player couldn't attack them and then withdraw without fearing pursuit.
4) NPRs will effectively be funneled toward player races (or other NPRs) once their space is connected to systems known by the player, making the game more interesting.
5) The number of slowdowns where the player is not involved will be reduced
6) The NPR decisions about which JPs to transit are effectively invisible to the player so it won't require any suspension of disbelief

I could also restrict the number of grav survey ships for an NPR. This is already done but it is the same number for all NPRs. By setting this restriction individually, different NPRs would explore at different speeds. Combined with the above you could have NPRs that will explore several systems out but only slowly. I guess both the number of systems and number of survey ships should be affected by the racial characteristics as well.

In addition to the above, I think a couple of other options could be added.
1) As a game setup parameter, the player can set the NPR generation chance when a system is generated by an NPR (as opposed to a player race)
2) As a game setup parameter, the player can turn off generation of spoilers by NPRs.

Setting both of the above to no generation would significantly reduce the number of slowdowns where the player is uninvolved
« Last Edit: June 24, 2014, 07:14:04 AM by Steve Walmsley »
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: Suggestion: Set NPR Cap / Toggle NPRs Exploration
« Reply #11 on: June 25, 2014, 07:03:37 AM »
2) As a game setup parameter, the player can turn off generation of spoilers by NPRs.

I would default this one (or possibly both) to "no generation", and I might not even make it a setup option if I were LEoA (Lord Emperor of Aurora).  It seems like a lot of your campaigns wander into ongoing wars, which seem a little coincidental (and weaken both sides).

John
 

Offline letsdance

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Re: Suggestion: Set NPR Cap / Toggle NPRs Exploration
« Reply #12 on: September 08, 2014, 10:50:12 AM »
Each NPR could have a set number of systems beyond which it would not transit unexplored JPs, from 0 to unlimited but more likely in the 2-4 range.
i like that. please let us set the range in the game options.
 

Offline linkxsc

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Re: Suggestion: Set NPR Cap / Toggle NPRs Exploration
« Reply #13 on: October 04, 2014, 05:42:15 PM »
Perhaps you could link the max exploration/ expansion range to that of the player +- a jump or 2 based on the difficulty mod. Might seem a little lame and predictable, but you could avoid them exploring too far and causing slowdown before you do it yourself