Scripted starting advantage theoreticals

[Vandermeer (OP)]

Hello, I just wanted to collect some sentiments (or intelligence) on whether or not there may be an artificially produced "lucky" roll on the first few systems you visit in an Aurora game.
Excluding my first feeble attempt at playing Aurora, I have 5 long running games under my hood so far, and I have been detecting the same pattern in every single one of them. The first around, let's say, 5 systems always contain:
1.) One system where there are one or more planets with starting world quality, except greater quantity. (Meaning: Nearly all resources present, average of 1.5mt each, high acc.)
2.) One system with extremely rich but harshly accessible worlds. (Acc. mostly 0.1, resources of multiple tenths of millions - up to 300+mt) - Other than the systems you may find later in the game though, there is always one planet that has, or nearly has all resources at once.
3.) Somewhere in there, there will be a gas giant with 30mt+ sorium and good acc. .
4.) At least one ruin site between those too.

None of my games so far went without fulfilling those criteria. I always considered myself lucky, because I knew the chances when I progressed in each of those games, and didn't easily find anything that could compare to those first worlds. In the game where I played as Stargate's Systemlords particularly I pretty much only consumed those advantageous starting systems, as even after surveying around 40 systems more I simply couldn't find something that really had it all anymore.(only settled for one outer system, and a really good gallicite site there, which otherwise didn't have anything notable)
My Star Trek game had it, where basically Alpha Centauri, and another directly neighboring star were this good. Then my Imperium game too, except that the viable gas giant was directly at home (Jupiter) with amazing 300+ mt at acc.1. Here I also found some more good sites through exploration - at least two of which amazing -, but nothing to the success-density of the very first 2 systems here, which were both strikes. Then the Zenit star swarm game.., ..oohh, you have no idea.
Now in my recently started Astral Republic custom game, I see this again, so I am becoming suspicious. Really powerful first 4 systems there, but now, after visiting around 30 more, I only found 2 relatively interesting all around planets, and 1-2 viable gas giants.

It seems too much to be chance, but it still may be illusion, so I am asking here for others experience. Has anyone ever had a bad start, where riches weren't directly in front of his yard? Or do you at least get great starts disproportionally often, meaning you find good and rich planets soon, but then only again every 10+ systems or so?
Please exclude for this judgement worlds that may have good acc. and nearly all minerals, but only have starting worlds amount (around half a million at max., and average at 100k). I know these are somewhat common, but I wouldn't call them "good", as they deplete too soon after just 20 years or so. So only stellar goldmines count, and I always found those directly nearby so far.

I also want to say, that I am not judging the practice of influencing chances in the beginning, if this is really true. It would be a good way of influencing that games get not just screwed up after an already sizable time investment from the player. I am just interested here whether I am right, or seeing random number generation ghosts.

[83athom]

My current game started badly. With in 4 jumps of home system there were only 2 planets (outside of sol) that had a colony cost less than 5, and 5 less than 10 (not including less than 5). One of the less than 5 cost (2.2) had another empire on it, and the other (0. had a ruin with guardians but has been dealt with. For the Gas giant richness, Neptune has plenty for a while, but the only other Gas Giant so far I've found that has any worth (amount, accessibility, and resource rich moons) is my current base for my first fleet which is 8 jumps away totaling about 22b km (one way). It seems you were just really lucky at the start. 1; Rarely encountered myself except a few games ago where I found a system that had 3 with a cost less than 2 only 3 jumps from Sol. 2; There are a few of those in my current game (Venus almost always seems to fulfill this criteria). 3; Usually only in Sol system I find, but sometimes (like current game) I find one or two relatively close by. 4; I've only found a ruin in my current game (on the 0..

[Vandermeer (OP)]

2; There are a few of those in my current game (Venus almost always seems to fulfill this criteria)

Funny, Venus was never useful in any of my 4 Sol starter games. Only ever had up to 3 of the resources. Great quantity, low acc., but not many sources, so not worth any investment.


I should have added to the above, that colony costs don't matter for this, only mineral richness. I only mine automatic since my 3rd game, but in any way it is only really mineral richness that defines the value of a planet. Habitability gives you the advantage of maybe using normal mines (with the disadvantage of having to ship infrastructure, terraform, and finally eternally struggle with providing updated PDC defense {or simply have ground troops and a never ending streak of paired morale loss+gain messages}), and it gives some wealth (but so does genetically engineering a new race on the homeworld, which too grows fast). Despite abandoning colonization entirely (+even bombing away captured NPR), not using this cheap genetic engineering trick and even eliminating civilian shipping, I still never have wealth problems, unless I really overstretch the shipyard building or retooling for huge sizes (megatons and more), which I understand nobody here ever does besides me. The PDC annoyance is what is really holding me back of doing it though. Exponential growth means that at some point you will simply never be able to put up with that demand, and I happened to play two games long enough to reach that point, so I stopped doing this. Automines are good enough. Mid to late game it is not the speed that matters, but that a planet can take your supergrind machine of multiple sets of 10k+ automine locusts jumping from place to place.

[83athom]

Funny, Venus was never useful in any of my 4 Sol starter games. Only ever had up to 3 of the resources. Great quantity, low acc., but not many sources, so not worth any investment.

Huh, Venus for me has usually had large amounts of almost everything with decent accessibility. Right now (about 100 years in) with auto-mining on Venus from the near beginning with putting 250 auto mines with mass drivers on it, it came with every ore except 3, it still has 1mil tons of the least amount ore.

I should have added to the above, that colony costs don't matter for this, only mineral richness. I only mine automatic since my 3rd game, but in any way it is only really mineral richness that defines the value of a planet. Habitability gives you the advantage of maybe using normal mines (with the disadvantage of having to ship infrastructure, terraform, and finally eternally struggle with providing updated PDC defense {or simply have ground troops and a never ending streak of paired morale loss+gain messages}), and it gives some wealth (but so does genetically engineering a new race on the homeworld, which too grows fast). Despite abandoning colonization entirely (+even bombing away captured NPR), not using this cheap genetic engineering trick and even eliminating civilian shipping, I still never have wealth problems, unless I really overstretch the shipyard building or retooling for huge sizes (megatons and more), which I understand nobody here ever does besides me. The PDC annoyance is what is really holding me back of doing it though. Exponential growth means that at some point you will simply never be able to put up with that demand, and I happened to play two games long enough to reach that point, so I stopped doing this. Automines are good enough. Mid to late game it is not the speed that matters, but that a planet can take your supergrind machine of multiple sets of 10k+ automine locusts jumping from place to place.

I udually don't put auto-mines on a planetary body unless they have somewhere to go ie. a colony (except for a few rare cases). And where you seem to always have too many people, I always have a deficit of people (required for all buildings on colony worlds) with Terra's population growing at 1.2% annually, with them being sent to colonies. I simply don't use the Genetic Centers. Oh and you aren't the only one with huge ships either, I play to game right now, the first being the one I've been talking about with the standard "accepted" ship classification sizes (with a little wiggle room). But the second (play it a lot less) I have big ships, my frigates alone dwarf all the ships (except commercial ones) in the first game.