Identifying precussors v NPRS?

[chrislocke2000 (OP)]

Hey all

So I'm about 15 years into a game where I've selected no random NPRs, 4 starting NPRs, swarms and precurssors.

After about 5 years of exploring I ran into what I think are a swarm  - piles of 800 ton messon blaster FACs and a 60k ton mother ship with massive shields.

I've also run into another bunch of aliens with ships doing just shy of 6000 kms, size 6 missiles with a range of over 100m km, a speed of nearly 30k kms and strength 8 warheads and some nasty beam weapons as well.  With the massive range difference in missiles to my own and anti missiles being pretty ineffective (chance to hit for me was 14. 5%!) my poor fleet of 8 8000 ton ships was decimated before I even got a shot off.  The aliens do appear in the diplo tab (same as the swarm) but I've failed to be able to make contact with them although they have picked up survivors from the wrecks.  The question is, have I just been useless in developing my tech compared to an NPR with the same sarting position or are these likely to be precussors and is there a set way to be able to tell?

[sloanjh]

Hey all

So I'm about 15 years into a game where I've selected no random NPRs, 4 starting NPRs, swarms and precurssors.

After about 5 years of exploring I ran into what I think are a swarm - piles of 800 ton messon blaster FACs and a 60k ton mother ship with massive shields.

I've also run into another bunch of aliens with ships doing just shy of 6000 kms, size 6 missiles with a range of over 100m km, a speed of nearly 30k kms and strength 8 warheads and some nasty beam weapons as well.  With the massive range difference in missiles to my own and anti missiles being pretty ineffective (chance to hit for me was 14. 5%!) my poor fleet of 8 8000 ton ships was decimated before I even got a shot off.  The aliens do appear in the diplo tab (same as the swarm) but I've failed to be able to make contact with them although they have picked up survivors from the wrecks.  The question is, have I just been useless in developing my tech compared to an NPR with the same sarting position or are these likely to be precussors and is there a set way to be able to tell?

Hi,

You might want to put a spoiler tag around more than just the name - it doesn't do a lot of good to hide the name if you're going to snerk the weapons/ship mix.

As for whether or not they're precursors, if all you find are sensor outputs (i.e. no populations) then there's a good chance that they're precursors.

Have fun!
John

[chrislocke2000 (OP)]

Thanks and sorry for not covering up more on the last post.

I guess my wider question was could I expect NPRs to acheive that sort of level of tech within 15 years of the start of the game with a normal T-N start?

If yes I'm clearly well behind the curve on developing my own race!

[ZimRathbone]

Depends on your starting conditions.

If you start with 500 million pop start then I would be astonished if a regular NPR reached this sort of tech level, if however you started with a 5-10 billion pop, then its much more likely

[sloanjh]

Thanks and sorry for not covering up more on the last post.

I guess my wider question was could I expect NPRs to acheive that sort of level of tech within 15 years of the start of the game with a normal T-N start?

If yes I'm clearly well behind the curve on developing my own race!

I went ahead and moved the spoiler tags for you - hope that's ok (sounds like you wanted them moved).  I got my cc of your post too :-)

15 years is a long time - it's about the amount of time it takes me to get out of Sol with a conventional start.  By the time I'm out, all the NPR I meet are waaaaaay ahead of me (they get to start TN even if you start conventional).  OTOH, those aliens sound pretty nasty; especially the range and speed - I don't recall them being quite that bad at that time.

John

[chrislocke2000 (OP)]

Yes they were pretty bad, I lost 64,000 tons of ships including two very expensive jump ships that also had the most expensive sensors in them.

After that little encounter I'm down to a small Sol defence force, one jump squadron and I'm pretty much out of minerals so struggling to rebuild anything - boy I'm loving this game!