How often do you meet non-technological NPRs?

[Foolcow (OP)]

In the few games I've played, about half the NPRs I've found have been non-technological; they had nothing but a population sitting on their home planet.

Does this seem normal, or have I just been lucky?

[voknaar]

I've yet to meet a conventional NPR. 

[mckamx]

I am currently playing a 5. 3 campaign, with no invaders or precursors.    With 1000 systems total, 224 known, 117 surveyed, I have run across 11 NPR's.    All had (most still have) ships.    I have conquored 2 them: both had ships at and PDC's on their homeworlds.    One was technologically inferior to me, the other was superior.    I have found a couple of more homeworlds, but I haven't used active sensor on them to see if there are any PDC's there.    Since there are fleets, my assumption is that all the NPR homeworlds I know about have technology and defenses.

[Shadow]

I've just found my first NPR, 44 years into the game.

They don't seem to be spontaneously generated by my scout's entrance to the system, since they have a good bunch of ships and presumably PDCs. What appears to be their homeworld (I hope) has slightly stronger signatures than Earth, putting its population at approximately 2 billion and a similar level of development.

[mckamx]

My understanding is that when the NPR's get generated, they get initial technologies and ships as if they had been building since the beginning of the game.    Therefore, while they may not have been generated until your scout ship arrived, you can't really tell that from what you find.    The advantage of not being generated at the beginning is that the game doesn't have to process the NPR turns until after they are generated, so early game turns run faster.

That's my understanding, but I'm a relative noob, so I may be completely wrong.

[Shadow]

I don't know much about NPR generation beyond the fact their tech level is supposed to be around yours.

But the apparent homeworld is in the middle of a jumpgate network, so perhaps that's evidence they've been around for a while.

[Father Tim]

Their tech level is related to yours, but it's still the result of a random roll (ie yours plus or minus some fraction).  Therefore, the lower your own tech level the more non-TN tech NPRs you will encounter.  If you do a massive bout of exploration just after developing TN tech you'll encounter maybe 50% non-TN NPRs.