Multiple Empires, vs NPR Generation?

[linkxsc (OP)]

Hey again. So random question.
As far as I understand, when the system generates NPRs they are based around the player's tech level and current ship tonnage, and are given "equivalent" equipment, based on the "difficulty modifier"
Ofcourse this doesnt stop a lot of NPR ships from being rather inefficient designs, and assuming you are playing with clean efficient designs, fighting up against even 150% NPRs isn't too hard (above that though, periodically, their bonused tech progression will just put them too far above. But this can be fun in its own way sometimes)

My thought is. Assuming you were running multiple empires (with possibly wildly varying tech levels)... which 1 does the system choose to base the NPR's level off of? Does it default to the "strongest" player race. Whichever race is the first to encounter them? Or just the "Default" player race?

[JacenHan]

I'm pretty sure the NPR's strength is derived from the game's length, not the empire that discovered it. The longer the game has run, the stronger the generated NPRs will be.

[Vandermeer]

I must refute that, as I have strong indication that it does have nothing to do with game length, because I have been running games with multiple hundreds of years, and generated NPR still spawned at Ion or Magneto-Plasma.
The documented Astral Republic game for example played in 150-200+ where I posted all this, because it took really long for me to get started as I begun without homeworld resources and artificial scarcity. The enemies there were just at or somewhat behind my tech level though. The first was at Ion when I had just risen to magnetic fusion, the second had internal fusion, and then developed to magnetic over some years. Finally, a yet undocumented third one spawned with few ships and magneto plasma again, even though I was at inertial fusion and had just multiplied my military tonnage by leagues.
(..my assumption is that those who were behind wasted their generation points into useless tech like bio, jump drives{in an all gate game} or too big caliber guns)

So my guess is so far that the generated NPR compare to your level and then maybe get a random plus or minus to that.

[GreatTuna]

I guess they get their RPs based on population size, government type (just like player) and time passed since start.
Then they get random researches until they run out of RPs, just like player who decided to start with "Use starting RP for auto-research" (or something like that) checkbox on. Since this auto-research researches drastically different techs, you can see unlucky NPRs with ion drives very late in the game.

My first NPR encountered had Nuclear Thermal engines while I was flying around with internal confinement engines. Second IIRC had magneto-plasma while I was refitting ships for Solid AM drives.

[Vandermeer]

I remember back into my Warhammer 40k game, that I had already researched plasma core antimatter drives, and my big 300k battlecruiser discovered and destroyed one NPR (size 2b+) which also just had ion drives.

This game started with 5b population, and the event happened to around 80-90, so somewhat more than 50 years in, and closer to 10b population, which I remember I had at year 110.(was needed for biggest shipyards to even run)
So that seems really like time would be a factor still, but then I wonder why I see the same guys at ages over 200... .
Maybe it is like [time]*[tech]*[population]+-*/[random] in some way, so when one is really low, it doesn't matter if the other factors are enormous.

[Steve Walmsley]

I thought I knew the answer to this (based on time) but decided to check anyway. I found the following comment and line of code

' tech points equal to 20 years research plus amount of time in game multiplied by 300
RaceParameters.StartTechPoints = RaceParameters.ResearchLabs * 6000

Unfortunately, they don't match . Looks like my intention was to have it based on time but never got around to adding the time component. So I've changed it to:

GameYears = (GameTime / SECONDSPERYEAR) + 20
RaceParameters.StartTechPoints = RaceParameters.ResearchLabs * GameYears * 300

[Vandermeer]

Whaat? Nooo! ..Uhm, thanks for answering the question first, but I have to make a case for realism vs. challenge here: If there is no further random parameter involved, it would be utterly ridiculous to stumble about just extremely high advanced races later on. In a realistic approach there would at least be the remote slim chance to find something way out of your league early, or at any stage, and then later some more advanced nations may become more likely for the challenge (with some ceiling in the distribution probably), but the laws of space and the origin of species would stay intact enough to see some underdogs here and there as well. That is just immersion, - the illusion of a realistic simulation.
I was kind of under the impression that this randomness already existed, even though I had never been overpowered so far, but I guess that effect must have been caused by the population scores of those races I found.
Anyway, when choosing between realism or challenge, I would always go for realism. I really dislike some rpgs for example, where whenever you get a level, all the enemies level up with you, mostly even without any visual changes. Then what is the reason to level at all... . Finding some overpowering foe, or a 'worthy opponent' is so much better when it comes randomly rather then through pressed artificial challenge, and you still get to enjoy the fruits of your labor whenever you get to squash some flies, so you see you have come far.

[Steve Walmsley]

Whaat? Nooo! ..Uhm, thanks for answering the question first, but I have to make a case for realism vs. challenge here: If there is no further random parameter involved, it would be utterly ridiculous to stumble about just extremely high advanced races later on. In a realistic approach there would at least be the remote slim chance to find something way out of your league early, or at any stage, and then later some more advanced nations may become more likely for the challenge (with some ceiling in the distribution probably), but the laws of space and the origin of species would stay intact enough to see some underdogs here and there as well. That is just immersion, - the illusion of a realistic simulation.
I was kind of under the impression that this randomness already existed, even though I had never been overpowered so far, but I guess that effect must have been caused by the population scores of those races I found.
Anyway, when choosing between realism or challenge, I would always go for realism. I really dislike some rpgs for example, where whenever you get a level, all the enemies level up with you, mostly even without any visual changes. Then what is the reason to level at all... . Finding some overpowering foe, or a 'worthy opponent' is so much better when it comes randomly rather then through pressed artificial challenge, and you still get to enjoy the fruits of your labor whenever you get to squash some flies, so you see you have come far.

It is still fairly random because the techs on which an NPR spends its points will make a huge difference. That's probably why you thought it was already random. I can still add some variation though.

[Vandermeer]

Is it true that NPRs have some guidance towards heavily investing in sensors by the way? Basically every NPR I found so far had amazing sensors of one or several degrees before mine, even when they were 3 engine tech levels behind me (or even 7 in my Wh40k game).

For the variation, I was brainstorming some Gauss distribution setups, created simply mixing multiple random generated numbers. For example there could be one like "1+ran[1]-ran[1]" as a factor to tech points, giving that on average the factor will be just one, and the grand majority of results just around that. Extremes like 0 and 2 might also be there as a factor, but just really rare. (just like with two dices of course)
Or a more jumpy result sphere by even multiplying random numbers like ran[2]*ran[2], so that on average you get 1 still, but whenever it goes above, it quickly increases towards potentially even 4 here. This could probably be better to accommodate exponentially rising tech costs (...but then again, the spawning population formula, which would give more labs on larger numbers, might already do this trick by itself, I don't know)

To incorporate challenge transformation over game time, the random factors could include some time values by themselves (..if that is even possible), like so: 1+ran[1+GameYear/50]-ran[1], so that while not strictly forbidding lower (=close zero) races to exist, the tendency shifts towards more extreme encounters. (though I would personally only like to be extreme encounters to become just stronger, not more likely)
There could be a ceiling on this positive random factor. Or instead the whole thing could take shape as negative exponent on both (like "+ran[1]^{-GameYear/100}-ran[1]^{-GameYear/100}"), which would cause the gauss curve to sharpen progressively, so that average encounters become more likely over time...

I don't know, there are many possibilities, and I think I haven't yet found what I actually wanted to present. I better wait for if this is even possible in Aurora or if you would even consider this complexity.
If you think it might be worth a look though, I can probably put together some legitimate 'chance over tech point over time' distribution graphs (in 3d ) for a couple alternatives of formulas and approaches. Would take some time to seriously think about though.

[linkxsc (OP)]

I thought I knew the answer to this (based on time) but decided to check anyway. I found the following comment and line of code

' tech points equal to 20 years research plus amount of time in game multiplied by 300
RaceParameters.StartTechPoints = RaceParameters.ResearchLabs * 6000

Unfortunately, they don't match . Looks like my intention was to have it based on time but never got around to adding the time component. So I've changed it to:

GameYears = (GameTime / SECONDSPERYEAR) + 20
RaceParameters.StartTechPoints = RaceParameters.ResearchLabs * GameYears * 300

I always did wonder why if I made a game (sol start, no other nprs at start) and messed around for 50years and finally left Sol with like mid fusion ships, enemies were still running around with low tech ion ships. Unless I cranked the game difficulty.

[IanD]

My experience has been somewhat different. in a previous 6.21 game (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=5470.0) difficulty set to 150% I came across two NPRs separated by approximately 10 years, which both had engine techs three or more above mine. In my current game v6.43 difficulty 400%, I have come across four NPRs all but one had ion drives, the last one had Magnetic Fusion Drive but I have Solid-core Anti-matter drives. All NPRs also had inferior sensor tech. In fact in my current game there is no research field in which the NPRs come close to mine. Starting pop was 500 million in current game.

Ian

[IanD]

I dug some details out about the two most advanced NPRs I defeated and tabulated the results below.

Aurora Version                         v6.21        v6.43 % Difficulty                           150          400 construction factories         7259        9014 mines                              10,212        8357 automines                           732        1507 ordnance factories                 1824        2278 fuel refineries                         3043       5676 maintenance facilities          415          519 R&D complexes                  302            92 deep space tracking station   5             6 military academies                  23           23 ground force training facilities   60         110 commercial shipyards           33          43 naval shipyards                   28          56 Total No slips                         151        240 No. Engine techs ahead            5          -2

Sorry table is not well formatted, didn't carry over from Excel.

In addition the v6.21 NPR was ahead in virtually all techs, the v6.43 ahead in only five, three of which were carronades which I didn't use.

It does appear the NPRs in v6.21 were a lot more formidable than those in v6.43

Ian