Stevefire.mdb and multiple campaigns

[Excaliber (OP)]

Hello Aurora forum,

I have a question concerning the stevefire. mdb file and playing multiple games on it.

Is this bad? Will bloat or corruption from one game affect other games? Should I always use a virgin stevefire for new games?

Thank you for your time. 

[Erik L]

When you create a new game it creates a new GameID. However, if your database is x size, then with two games it will be 2x. So you can swap out database files if you wish. It is not entirely necessary though.

[Excaliber (OP)]

Thanks, I was just wondering because I have 2 games that are both 100+ years along and both are starting to slow down considerably.  Wondered how much they were affecting each other.  I'll probably use different database files from now on just to eliminate it from the equation.

[Barkhorn]

They don't affect each other.  The slowdown you're experiencing is a combination of a few things.

1) Your civilian companies get ridiculously huge and operate possibly hundreds of ships, all of which must be updated every increment.

2) Any non-player races are growing, exploring, and possibly fighting each other.  If an NPR needs a lower time interval due to a battle, that's what you're stuck with, whether you're involved in the battle or not.

3) Those NPR's also have civilian ships just like you do in #1.

[Excaliber (OP)]

That's good that they don't affect each other.   I didn't really want to bother with switching databases back and forth. 

It's not npc's because I have a strict exterminate on sight policy regarding all alien races.   If a spoiler or npc gets away from me I immediately set the npc generation chance to zero until I'm sure they've been dealt with.   I've lost more games then I can count due to npc snowball effect and learned my lesson.   I no longer start games with active npcs and npc generation chance together, it's either one or the other.   

Funny that you should mention those civilians.   Sometime ago I SM'ed a small pirate faction on some backwater planet just for the purpose taking out my civilians when they got too bloated.   It appears I have about 200 civ ships.   I think I'll play as a pirate tonight and see how much that helps.   It's really not too bad yet, about 1 minute for a 5 day increment but I'll kill all my civies anyway and report back.