Author Topic: Should I continue this game?  (Read 1653 times)

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Offline Zook (OP)

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Should I continue this game?
« on: August 24, 2012, 12:40:33 PM »
This is only my second game of Aurora (the first one ended in 2029 or so, when I met a bunch of space punks right next to Sol), and for the most part, it's been a ton of fun.

The stardate is December, 2085. Unfortunately, I chose the default parameters for a new game, with all spoilers on. 1000 systems, 50% chance of new NPRs, etc. There have been times of horrible slowdown before, when NPRs fought among themselves, but I understand the game mechanisms enough now to know this is temporary, and I'm patient enough to wait. I haven't even had much contact with NPRs, just two battles and two outposts conquered. I don't know where all the action is.

Then I somehow activated the logging function which writes megabytes of logfiles in c:\logs, without noticing the folder for a while. When I had a look at the logs, I found that there is so much NPR activity that my last turn took seven minutes to calculate. It advanced time by two days. (Also, there's a bug that crept into the database which causes an overflow error once per turn, meaning the game stops and waits for me to click "OK" before continuing, but that's a minor issue.)

At this rate, the game isn't going anywhere - approximately twenty hours of CPU time to get through the next year is just too much. Which is too bad, because humanity has a sixty-year history of space exploration now, and I'd really like to continue this. It has become a real story.

Then I opened the latest log file, covering one year, in Excel and had it count the events for each race:

Code: [Select]
Balder 174 5%
Bassfield 37 1%
Darbhanga 12 0%
Dell 1157 34%
Eredenn Prime 25 1%
Gentes 33 1%
Geoje 13 0%
Giraffe 96 3%
Hanover 68 2%
Human 556 17%
Invader 885 26%
Nagel 38 1%
Precursors 85 3%
Star Swarm 130 4%
Vorkuta 53 2%

Sadly, humanity has become a sideshow in the game. And these NPRs aren't even fighting much. They make the game unplayable just by promoting officers, building mines and factories and detecting ships once in a while.

I have already switched off spoilers, preventing them from spawning more time-eating nasties, and reduced the number of systems to 900, but the game is getting slower and slower anyway. And it's probably getting worse, with new systems being discovered.

My question: is there a way to reduce the sheer amount of NPR activity somewhat, over time? Reduce the number of systems? Hope for them to destroy each other? Reduce the chance of new NPRs? I can wait for the game to become playable again, but not if there isn't any hope.
 

Offline Zook (OP)

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Re: Should I continue this game?
« Reply #1 on: August 24, 2012, 01:03:08 PM »
More log file analysis, this time the events from 2079-80, a seriously bad year for the impatient player:

Code: [Select]
Balder 130 0%
Dell 1829 4%
Eredenn Prime 21 0%
Gentes 74 0%
Geoje 13 0%
Human 407 1%
Invader 20973 51%
Nagel 23 0%
Precursors 748 2%
Star Swarm 16810 41%

Apparently, two spoiler races had a major disagreement somewhere. And while I understand that log file activity isn't equal to CPU time, it's clear that my game isn't going in the right direction. Five new races appeared in four years...
 

Offline Redshirt

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Re: Should I continue this game?
« Reply #2 on: August 24, 2012, 01:10:18 PM »
Find them and exterminate them. That should significantly cut your lag time. :)
Living up to my username. . .
 

Offline Nathan_

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Re: Should I continue this game?
« Reply #3 on: August 24, 2012, 08:32:02 PM »
invaders AGGRESSIVELY explore, and the star system cap seems like a soft one rather than a hard one(meaning that they can go over that limit), so they are basically the issue.
 

Offline Rabid_Cog

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Re: Should I continue this game?
« Reply #4 on: August 25, 2012, 01:39:12 AM »
Did you say 50% chance of NPR's? That doesn't sound right. Shouldn't it be 5% or something for a default game?
I have my own subforum now!
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6.2 part: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5906.0.html

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http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5452.0.html
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: Should I continue this game?
« Reply #5 on: August 25, 2012, 01:58:50 AM »
Did you say 50% chance of NPR's? That doesn't sound right. Shouldn't it be 5% or something for a default game?
30% is default.

Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Re: Should I continue this game?
« Reply #6 on: August 25, 2012, 04:04:45 AM »
It's invaders that do it in a long game like that.  They've probably discovered more systems than you ever will.

I would just abandon the game personally.  Start again with invaders off until you want them on. 

Lately I do 0% NPR generation chance; if I have NPRs I create them manually in SM mode so I can give them infinite homeworld minerals.
 

Offline xeryon

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Re: Should I continue this game?
« Reply #7 on: August 26, 2012, 11:48:28 PM »
I second the restart without the Invaders.  Once you get bored or things are getting easy turn them on later in the game.

I think I recall the system numbers had more to do with initial system generation.  The program generates and links X number of systems together but as a race expands and hits the cap it continues to add new systems one at a time.  (or something like that)