To sum up, I'm keen to replicate this setup, albeit on a slightly smaller scale (perhaps limiting it to 5 races in total, with myself playing a role akin to the UN and the remaining 4 being others). However, I'm stuck at the initial stage of how to create NPRs on Earth. From that point, I can manage with database editing, as I still have my notes (and, apparently, a complete export of the database in JSON format, which I believe I executed using "DB Browser for SQLite").

When you create each new race there is a checkbox to create them as NPR on the race design screen. No DB editing should be necessary for this step.

Ahh, I just found the rules I had written down that I RP my nations all signed on to.

No genocidal war. Conflicts shall be resolved with smallest scale military action possible, including limited destruction of infrastructure or military assets. Any attempt at the total annihilation of one nation would be met with the declaration of war on the offending nation by all nations.

All efforts must be made to spread the species into space. No nation shall prevent any other nation from following this Law. Since anything could happen to the homeworld or any colony, as many colonies must be created and spread among the stars.

There are Laws governing the claiming, acquisition, and contesting claims of bodies in space. A nation cannot officially claim a body without a good reason. Claims on bodies are split into three tiers.
(
1: Weak claim. No colonists. Some installations, no significant strategic value, or economic gain currently.
2: Decent claim. Small number of colonists or no colonists. Might have some military presence in space or on the ground. Some strategic value or economic gain.
3: Strong claim. Large number of colonists, maybe millions. Permanent military presence in space and on the ground. Large strategic and/or economic value.
)

(These 2 laws do their best to ensure colonisation will be organised but steady. No cowboys running round claiming everything and using that claim to justify military action.)

A maximum upper limit to the total military tonnage that nations could control at any one time. This limit stands at 100,000 tons. Survey ships or auxiliary ships not included.

(I was thinking of raising that one quite a bit, 100K seems a touch limiting. 150 to 200K maybe. I don't know about some kind of Washington style naval treaty to define ship classes to limit or encourage certain things, I'm thinking it won't be a fun idea, so just a tonnage limit early on. At least until no nation needs to care about any other opinion.)

Since the species is supposed to be very much antagonistic towards itself, there would always be at least some tension and potential for fighting.


EDIT: One of the reasons for me having a treaty like that, even though I intended for the nations to eventually abandon it, was to force everybody to use smaller ships. Every nation was using small numbers of sub 10K ton ships, mostly 5 to 7K. I think it is a realistic choice in universe and also lessens the cost of the military and forces economic development earlier on. It also shrinks the scale of the conflict.
Also I remember adding the law about claims after there was a conflict between two nations over colonising a mars like planet in their home system at the same time, so those two nations will always have a place to fight over. I want the various nations to always have a reason to exercise their innate desire to fight.

Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on December 08, 2023, 06:01:09 PM

troops should always be set to rear or support as troops on the same body will not be able to strike each other that way at all, thus you simulate that no combat occurs on that body.

I've used that workaround too, but that is going to fall apart once heavy/long range bombardment come into play (which shoot from the rear), and it's a bit annoying to set/unset on large amounts of formations.

If all formations are set to rear echelon then long range artillery will not fire... I even tested this right now just to be sure. I have used this before. But yes... I would like a button to just set units to peace which means they will not fire unless the opponent is not also set at peace on that same body.

The obvious answer would probably be "to create a good story", since multi-race starts are often designed for RP potential and are frequently encountered in the AAR forum.

In reality, story or background is the less painful and over the years when I wanted something quick and dirty I simply used either the real story (you can pick it up at any time and note the social/political landscape of that time) or simply the classic "what if", which would may require a bit more of your brain, but not that much. The final option would be going full brain mode (and patience) ON and get it from scratch.

However, I'm a bit curious if there are other goals that are put into this, when you start designing such a start with multiple races controlled by one human. Is it an inevitable slugfest towards mutual annihilation, do you take precautions to avoid this,

I don't find the goals to be any different than when you start exploring and find NPR to deal with to be honest. I am writing later some suggestions to make your game enough variegated or to keep it interesting.

or does the game inevitably end before any of this because of game slowdowns? Something else entirely?

I think if you never started anything like this, probably at the beginning you have many "fears", some of them may be justified (slowdowns), some others may come from random bugs people encounter, however version 2.3 just out is pretty much breaking bug safe and really code optimized for best performances. While many would disagree, for longevity I always use the same precautions: no civvies, I will control any new NPR. Spoilers are enough CPU varied opponents especially if you start as TN or Low Tech with Limited admins. When I play with Civvies and NPR controlled by the CPU I never Multi race start, I rather go solo. Also, I usually do that to try new things against unknown opponents.

A reason behind the question is that I have always been fascinated with the idea of multi-race starts, but have so far been a bit intimated by the set-up process and the prospect of game progression relative to the time I have to play. However, recently I have gravitated more and more towards trying it out, especially since the new templates decreases the setup when ship designs can more easily be replicated between races.

The fastest way to start is to design all components, ground forces, and ships without spending too much time on the names and such. You can edit this once you have completed your setup. In the past I would try to get these right from the start and was a massive waste of time. A lot of the things will unfold as you play, since the direction each race will take on tech tree will also determine a lot of the decision you'll have to also take as Game Master. For this reason, for Newbies in the Multi Race space, I strongly recommend to start early TN. The best for you would be:

Biology/Genetics - No Advancement (SM remove all researched techs)
Construction/Production - All Techs =<3,000RP
Defensive Systems =<1,000RP
Energy Weapons =<2,000RP
Ground Combat is controversial. Personally, I think you should know all the elements from the start, and leave only advancement and perks to the research tree and I set it that way. I leave the Xeno for once I discover ruins.
Logistics =<4,000
Missile/Kinetic =<2,000
Propulsion <=2,000 no Consumption advancement
Sensor <=2,000 no Gravitational advancement

Set your Research Points and Construction points to 0 as well. Let the needs drive your story. You will still setup an initial Commercial and Combat Navy, but I would keep it to a standard for all factions and let the randomness of the Shipyards dictate your designs. You should allow yourself one design per Shipyard and assign it from the beginning. The amount of slipways could determine the amount of the ships. I use the 10:1 Aurora rule. 1 Commercial slipway counts for 10 ships, while 1 Naval slipway will deliver only 1 Ship. But hey, you can make your own rules. For extra Randomness I design 1 dedicated Race per Race, without using the Human recommended. So I start with a Standard Human SM Race, then create a new race on Earth and call it Human Chinese, Human European, and so on. This will give me random traits and random bonuses/malus to the racial traits, meaning a race with 2.0 research, may need less labs than a 1.0 one or could simply be the opposite and just pump out research labs, up to you. This will be also potentially driving your goals due to the difference in traits of each race.

I will likely have several questions, which might be better off in the other questions thread, but for an initial discussion there is one particular thing on my mind. An obvious start would be the classical 3 faction Sol start, but part of the appeal for me is to experience warfare between multiple human controlled races. If the main base of all three factions are on the same home planet, it seems that any warfare would inevitably lead to mutual annihilation, unless heavy handed RP ensures that attacks on outer bases/colonies does not immediately translate to all out ground war on Earth. This is not a terribly unrealistic prospect, but not necessarily an interesting one, hence my question (to those of you who have experience with this) if this is just the nature of the game for such a setup, or if you are consciously steering the story in a way that avoids this? Or does the game generally slow down and stop before you ever get to this point, so that the enjoyable parts are rather the buildup instead of the actual warfare? Also feel free to suggest alternate interesting setups. I had considered doing a Mars-Earth two factions start and while it will solve the issue of immediate ground war, it would like still result in a complete stalemate once hostilities break out.

SM the diplomatic relationship and set it as fixed 10,000 so that you can RP the relationships and the treaties regardless. I know it could be interesting to have random races going to war because they do not like each other, but I still like to be in control and perhaps allow myself of a cold war sometimes.

Personally, by following where Aurora takes me, I hardly find the need to go war early on as the question is: why would this race do that? Yes, there is the dominance, needs of minerals, ideology, and so on. In reality, you will find out soon enough that your biggest enemy is the branch splitting where each faction goes its own way, as space is so big after all. So if you not careful your game will be a sort of this:

Race build up
Race discovers a jump point
Race travels and finds a suitable world
Race starts moving its people and infrastructure to the new world
Race goes its way on its own branch
Player have 4 solo games against CPU at the same time

I leave to your creativity how to avoid the above cirle. I have a couple of things that I use to keep races in check, but again, it's your game, see where it leads you or where you lead it!

troops should always be set to rear or support as troops on the same body will not be able to strike each other that way at all, thus you simulate that no combat occurs on that body.

I've used that workaround too, but that is going to fall apart once heavy/long range bombardment come into play (which shoot from the rear), and it's a bit annoying to set/unset on large amounts of formations.

You don't need massive amount of detail for each faction and you don't need to obsessively detail everything that the factions produce, research and plan.

Wait, you don't?!

That's what I did in my really old Three-way Race to Stars where the focus was on characters.

I know Steve had a campaign by that name too, but you as well? I'm really not that original, am I? 😅

Unfortunately there aren't very many tools in the game right now for interaction between empires. The diplomatic trade option doesn't work (not sure if fixed in the new version), tech sharing does not allow for detailed control, there are no options to share wealth, facilities, designs, intelligence, ammunition etc. among allies. Setting an empire hostile causes breakout of fighting on every shared body, there are no individually commanded attacks. There is at least a ship transfer option that made it in in one of the more recent versions. Some of these interactions between empires can be achieved through DB editing, but that's a hassle and not something everyone wants to do.

There are ways to do some of the thing you said can't be done. Wealth can be edited so that way you can transfer wealth between faction, troops should always be set to rear or support as troops on the same body will not be able to strike each other that way at all, thus you simulate that no combat occurs on that body. You also now can trade ships and designs so that is also something that is added to the game. Technology sharing are in my opinion best used with SM anyway in many cases, the same for trade in the form of resources, minution, supplies and fuel etc... I don't think that sharing maintenance facilities should be a thing though, that seem like an odd thing to be able to share, shore leave on the other hand you should probably be able to do at an allied colony. Likewise you should be able to refuel and resupply at an allied base etc...

Allthough allot of stuff such as refueling and sharing of facilities can be done by temporarily switching fleets between factions, allthough not the best way of doing it you can do it.

Quote from: Steve Walmsley on December 08, 2023, 10:09:57 AM

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on December 08, 2023, 09:31:32 AM

I agree completely with this, Aurora is best suited for emergent storytelling, if you already have decided what will happen beyond some very broad strokes (e.g., China getting nuked as in all Steve AARs) I feel like this limits the appeal of the game.

I don't decide ahead of time about China - they just seem to have really bad luck in my games

You should run and publish an experiment to see if this is still true in C#... for science of course 

I second this motion