Upon what is the difficulty and size of NPRs based?

[Panpiper (OP)]

I started a new game but gave myself a rather large starting population. I encountered an NPR right behind the first jump point I went through who had WAY over 100 ships, many of them well above 20K and moving at close to 10000KPS.  WTF???!!!

Did this happen because the difficulty got amped by my starting with a big world? (I was by no means ready for this, I had all of a couple of scouts.) Is the size and/or difficulty of NPRs influenced by the size of your starting planet? What else dictates this sort of thing? What should I do to 'avoid' this sort of thing in my next game, as that game was clearly a bust.

[Jorgen_CAB]

How long did you wait before you entered that Jump Point?

As far as I know the power of NPR is somewhat random but it is based on your starting population and the amount of time that is spent in the game since the start. Meeting an NPR with a ship speed of 10000km/s seems rather fast if you are early in the game.

When I play in my games at 10-20% research and I meet an NPR after about 40-50 years of getting out there and start exploring NPR usually have about 3-4000km/s in speed on their ships... my ships usually are a bit slower than that or roughly equal if I over-boost them properly.

[Panpiper (OP)]

I jumped in the second year. I had however in addition to starting large, given myself quite a few starting tech and ship points. It looks to me. or so I suspect, that whatever bonuses you give to yourself, the NPRs get it too.

[brondi00]

That's correct.  If you set a bunch of tech and ship points they get them too.  And if you give yourself a bunch of pop they get very developed world's too.