Radio telescope - stop playing boring games

[Kaiser (OP)]

I was thinking, sometimes you start a game, start to explore 30-40 systems, colonize dozens of planets and so on, the game start to get little boring because obviously you can't find any new NPR or space invaders or this famous "humans" lost ages ago ( I really wish to find them).
You are missing the most important factor in a game: competition and communication

So, I was thinking, Steve, about a new installation, a radio telescope or something like that, which works as the SETI program, giving the player indications and suggestions ( the bigger the installation, the more accurate is the information), where to find NPR or other forms of lives by catching radio signals.

[Droll]

I was thinking, sometimes you start a game, start to explore 30-40 systems, colonize dozens of planets and so on, the game start to get little boring because obviously you can't find any new NPR or space invaders or this famous "humans" lost ages ago ( I really wish to find them).
You are missing the most important factor in a game: competition and communication

So, I was thinking, Steve, about a new installation, a radio telescope or something like that, which works as the SETI program, giving the player indications and suggestions ( the bigger the installation, the more accurate is the information), where to find NPR or other forms of lives by catching radio signals.

This would work well for NPRs created on game start but would not work with how random NPR generation is. Randomly generated NPRs do not actually exist until you stumble on the star system they are in IIRC. So your radio telescopes would have to somehow point at something that doesn't exist.

You could I guess have it so that they can point towards life-bearing planets which would be the next best thing.

[SpaceCowboy]

It would also be nice if we could have the option to weight how jump points connections are formed so that new systems are "towards" existing NPRS.

It always takes me forever to run into the NPRs created at the game start, unless I force them to be within a few light years of Sol.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I was thinking, sometimes you start a game, start to explore 30-40 systems, colonize dozens of planets and so on, the game start to get little boring because obviously you can't find any new NPR or space invaders or this famous "humans" lost ages ago ( I really wish to find them).
You are missing the most important factor in a game: competition and communication

So, I was thinking, Steve, about a new installation, a radio telescope or something like that, which works as the SETI program, giving the player indications and suggestions ( the bigger the installation, the more accurate is the information), where to find NPR or other forms of lives by catching radio signals.

Why not just use Space Master and generate some NPR to fight when you get bored... that work pretty well in general.

[amram]

I was thinking, sometimes you start a game, start to explore 30-40 systems, colonize dozens of planets and so on, the game start to get little boring because obviously you can't find any new NPR or space invaders or this famous "humans" lost ages ago ( I really wish to find them).
You are missing the most important factor in a game: competition and communication

So, I was thinking, Steve, about a new installation, a radio telescope or something like that, which works as the SETI program, giving the player indications and suggestions ( the bigger the installation, the more accurate is the information), where to find NPR or other forms of lives by catching radio signals.

Why not just use Space Master and generate some NPR to fight when you get bored... that work pretty well in general.

Or boost the chance of an NPR on a habitable planet to 100% and go on an exploration spree, you still won't know anything about when/where, but it won't be long.

[vorpal+5]

Here is a hand made house rule:

1. Keep a tally of the number of systems you uncovered (just uncovered, not even fully explored)
2. Before jumping into an unknown wormhole, roll a percentile dice (physically, as in pen & paper RPG  )
3. If the value is under 2x (or 3x, etc. choose) the number of uncovered systems, then crank up the chance to have a NPR on a habitable planet to 100%
4. Make the jump.
5. Revert the setting to your norm (30% chance e.g.)


Basically, you are making so that the chance to get a NPR increases until you get one.

[Froggiest1982]

I was thinking, sometimes you start a game, start to explore 30-40 systems, colonize dozens of planets and so on, the game start to get little boring because obviously you can't find any new NPR or space invaders or this famous "humans" lost ages ago ( I really wish to find them).
You are missing the most important factor in a game: competition and communication

So, I was thinking, Steve, about a new installation, a radio telescope or something like that, which works as the SETI program, giving the player indications and suggestions ( the bigger the installation, the more accurate is the information), where to find NPR or other forms of lives by catching radio signals.

Why not just use Space Master and generate some NPR to fight when you get bored... that work pretty well in general.

Or boost the chance of an NPR on a habitable planet to 100% and go on an exploration spree, you still won't know anything about when/where, but it won't be long.

I honestly think that once u start playing with 5% survey speed and 15% research you already gained something like 100 to 150 years game time before ypu can be a threat for any NPR or Spolier race.
If you do add 50% chance generation of NPR and bump up 30% chance for NPR to generate another race then you are in for a hell of a ride...

[Jorgen_CAB]

I was thinking, sometimes you start a game, start to explore 30-40 systems, colonize dozens of planets and so on, the game start to get little boring because obviously you can't find any new NPR or space invaders or this famous "humans" lost ages ago ( I really wish to find them).
You are missing the most important factor in a game: competition and communication

So, I was thinking, Steve, about a new installation, a radio telescope or something like that, which works as the SETI program, giving the player indications and suggestions ( the bigger the installation, the more accurate is the information), where to find NPR or other forms of lives by catching radio signals.

Why not just use Space Master and generate some NPR to fight when you get bored... that work pretty well in general.

Or boost the chance of an NPR on a habitable planet to 100% and go on an exploration spree, you still won't know anything about when/where, but it won't be long.

I honestly think that once u start playing with 5% survey speed and 15% research you already gained something like 100 to 150 years game time before ypu can be a threat for any NPR or Spolier race.
If you do add 50% chance generation of NPR and bump up 30% chance for NPR to generate another race then you are in for a hell of a ride...

Yes... I started my current game with exactly that and just sprung across my first NPR close to Earth after about 50 years into the game and I'm still at Improved Nuclear Thermal engines...
I think I had two starting NPRs in this game, fortunately this NPR don't seem too aggressive. They blow up two of my gravitational survey vessels after they against my orders went into their space, but they otherwise seem none aggressive.

Just managing your 40+ survey vessels is a full time job in this game.

I can barely match their ships speed but the warships I have burn fuel like crazy to do that...

[Froggiest1982]

Just managing your 40+ survey vessels is a full time job in this game.

True, until you can get Ion vessels with 60 months deployment at least it is a job!

[Droll]

Just managing your 40+ survey vessels is a full time job in this game.

True, until you can get Ion vessels with 60 months deployment at least it is a job!

Just set up their standing orders + check "exclude alien controlled". The only problem left is deployment - either set it to very long or be like me and design your survey ships around 25% effectiveness. Its near-full automation.

The main issue is with systems that have more than one star - I have had scenarios where there have been stars with good planets but are 300bn km from the primary. Even if there are lagrange points the standing order 10bn rule doesn't care so will need manual intervention. But even then all you need to do is give one survey order on one of the bodies around that star for every ship you want there and the rest of the bodies will be surveyed.

[liveware]

Just managing your 40+ survey vessels is a full time job in this game.

True, until you can get Ion vessels with 60 months deployment at least it is a job!

Just set up their standing orders + check "exclude alien controlled". The only problem left is deployment - either set it to very long or be like me and design your survey ships around 25% effectiveness. Its near-full automation.

The main issue is with systems that have more than one star - I have had scenarios where there have been stars with good planets but are 300bn km from the primary. Even if there are lagrange points the standing order 10bn rule doesn't care so will need manual intervention. But even then all you need to do is give one survey order on one of the bodies around that star for every ship you want there and the rest of the bodies will be surveyed.

This extreme system size variability is partly what drove me to using commercial jump carriers to move around my fleets (survey fleets included). On those I can get extremely ridiculous range which helps mitigate this problem quite a bit.

[liveware]

I was thinking, sometimes you start a game, start to explore 30-40 systems, colonize dozens of planets and so on, the game start to get little boring because obviously you can't find any new NPR or space invaders or this famous "humans" lost ages ago ( I really wish to find them).
You are missing the most important factor in a game: competition and communication

So, I was thinking, Steve, about a new installation, a radio telescope or something like that, which works as the SETI program, giving the player indications and suggestions ( the bigger the installation, the more accurate is the information), where to find NPR or other forms of lives by catching radio signals.

Some sort of long-range NPR detection mechanism would be a nice addition. I'm not sure the best way to implement in the current system however since currently NPR's are generated only when you first enter a new star system.

Maybe instead of radio telescopes there could be something like a jump point scanner module (or something) that will affect the generation rate of NPRs on the other side of a jump point that it is assigned to?

Or maybe the radio telescope concept could work by having a roll every day/year/month/whatever and if the roll passes then a new system is discovered on the galaxy map and a new race is added to the race list? The new system wouldn't necessarily be connected to your existing jump point network and might be unreachable, but at least you could tell if something was out there...

[esavier]

Its kinda hard to determine directions in space.  There are jumps, but those are in undetermined direction.  Those of course are there, but jump from your first system can can be far longer than several subsequent jumps in summary, and also all the other jumps can be in oposite direction to the fist one, its just the jump points are not there.
However this SETI stuff is not a bad idea.  After building one we could use it to find jump point in current system that is connected to system that has higher chance of containing either swarm or aliens or whatever (cuthulu would be awesome but i digress).  There would be only one point available, so you roll for reveal - on success - you finding it, on fail you locking it out for good, or you roll for neutral and you will have another chance in e. g.  10 years.  This would work with current mechanics and i think it would give you risk-reward mechanics to explore your systems better.  That would be for example super effective in case of planetless transit systems

[liveware]

Not to digress too much, but you could in theory create a custom NPR called 'The Great Old Ones' and add The Dread Lord himself as the race portrait.

I think I'm going to have to add a Cthulhu portrait to my race image folder...