Customised NPRs

[AlStar]

I was actually reading an interesting thread about this on Reddit.

A lot of place names that sound 'cool' to our ears are just boring-ass names in the original language that they're from.

Unfortunately I can't find the thread, but I remember that a lot of cities end up with names that translate, literally, to just "Capital" or "Town on the River/Hill/Lake"

For instance, Tokyo just means "Eastern Capital"

[Garfunkel]

I vaguely recall a place in England that is just HillHillHillHill but in 4 different languages. Stuff like that happens quite a bit over the centuries.

[Froggiest1982]

I've been working on a new option for game start, that allows you to customise NPRs, while still retaining a reasonable degree of randomness. Essentially, if you click a 'Customise NPR' checkbox on game start, you will get one popup window for each NPR as part of the game creation process. So far, this allows you to alter the following options, or leave the random option generated before the window is displayed.

• Race Name, Race Title and Home World name
• Images for Race, Flag, Ship and Station
• Commander Naming Theme and Rank Theme
• Name Themes for Systems, Classes, Ground Forces and Missiles
• Species characteristics such as Xenophobia, Determination, etc.
• Production, Research and Growth modifiers
• Starting Tech Point and Build Point modifiers
• Ship Size modifier
• If the Race uses Shields: Yes, No or Random
• If the Race uses Missiles: Yes, No or Random
• Primary Beam Weapon: Random, Laser, Railgun, Particle or Carronade
• Point Defence Beam Weapon: Random, Laser, Railgun or Gauss
• Starting System and a list of acceptable Dominant Terrain

(snipping Star Trek Locations text as this is now in a new thread)

Thanks, I can finally bin the Alien Generator tab in my spreadsheet.

[Conscript Gary]

I would just like to be able to make a pass to check that NPRs aren't being created with silly names as they're frequently generated with real-world place names.

If you can outline the 'non-silly name' logic, I would be happy to implement it

I think what he is saying is he would just like to be able to manually check.  Algorithm would be HumanBrainV1.0

Using this logic, every time a new race is generated, you would need a pop-up to name it, even though you don't necessarily know the race was just generated. I think that would spoil fog-of-war and break immersion, especially when enter a new system and get the 'new name' popup.

You can rename new races already as soon as they are detected. I thought the idea was to generate 'non-silly-names' behind the scenes.

You're right that it would spoil the fog-of-war, but I would personally compare it to the 'Generate New Races as NPRs' checkbox. When that option is disabled, the fog of war doesn't exist at all- the player has complete knowledge and control of aliens when they generate. Getting a pop-up to name and theme them but then leaving them to run as NPRs afterwards is like a mid-point between the current extremes.

[QuakeIV]

I would just like to be able to make a pass to check that NPRs aren't being created with silly names as they're frequently generated with real-world place names.

If you can outline the 'non-silly name' logic, I would be happy to implement it

I think what he is saying is he would just like to be able to manually check.  Algorithm would be HumanBrainV1.0

Using this logic, every time a new race is generated, you would need a pop-up to name it, even though you don't necessarily know the race was just generated. I think that would spoil fog-of-war and break immersion, especially when enter a new system and get the 'new name' popup.

You can rename new races already as soon as they are detected. I thought the idea was to generate 'non-silly-names' behind the scenes.

I suppose you could furnish a name/appearance popup upon contact (or communication establishment), its too late to allow full customization but some things could be changed freely after the race has already been generated, I would think.  (could pre-populate the popup with what the name/appearance were upon generation)

[superstrijder15]

This is exactly what I am looking for right now, I want to make a setting with 'degenerating' and 'incompetent' NPRs, which can basically be NPRs I encounter in the wild and then having their name adjusted when I meet them, and my player race and a few 'expanding' NPRs, and I'd want them to be the races that exist in the canon that I am taking this scenario from. These options would be great for that!

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I suppose you could furnish a name/appearance popup upon contact (or communication establishment), its too late to allow full customization but some things could be changed freely after the race has already been generated, I would think.  (could pre-populate the popup with what the name/appearance were upon generation)

I've added an SM option to the Intelligence window to change the actual NPR name. You can use this after first contact. It will show the originally generated name when you use it, so you can choose to change it.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13346.msg166451#msg166451