How to delete NPRs with step by step guide?

[Garfunkel]

I won't comment much on the two last replies (especially the last one, just please don't bother with such useless answers in the future)

You admitted yourself that you have no idea what you're doing and I'd bet that you spent more time asking questions and figuring it out than you would have spent setting up a new game. There's also the possibility that something small is messed up that will end up haunting your game 50 years later. It has happened to a lot of us, even without DB editing. My response was the safest and easiest thing to do, not a useless / asshole answer you think it was.

[Steve Walmsley]

You admitted yourself that you have no idea what you're doing and I'd bet that you spent more time asking questions and figuring it out than you would have spent setting up a new game. There's also the possibility that something small is messed up that will end up haunting your game 50 years later. It has happened to a lot of us, even without DB editing. My response was the safest and easiest thing to do, not a useless / asshole answer you think it was.

Yes, I agree. I personally wouldn't try deleting a race from the DB (and I know the DB fairly well). Even Delete Race in the UI is really only intended for correcting mistakes in race creation, rather than letting a campaign run for many years and then deleting a race. I think I have covered everything, but its a rare situation and therefore not properly tested. You may find weird bugs, especially when the race was created as an NPR. You can't make a race a normal Player Race by simply flipping the NPR flag in the DB (although you can make it visible that way). That's why that is not a game option.

Generally speaking, trying to make the game do something that the UI doesn't allow is a bad idea, unless you really know what you are doing. Starting again is a much safer option.

[Stormtrooper (OP)]

"Starting again is a much safer option"

Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope and once again nope.  If that was an option this post wouldn't exist so please stop, I'm tired from all this "advice" that is anything but helpful, why every internet forum has to be like this?. . .

Back to the topic, well, I flipped the flag for Nprs and then used delete race button in game.  Performance boost was huge, sure, I got a few db errors next time I opened the game, but to be fair I had some errors popping up at random points long before this for apparently no reason at all, I got used to it, nothing seems to be affected by this change so far except my performance skyrocketed.

What could happen in the worst case? My save will blow up at some point, but that's it, so after investing a few dozen hours into it I feel like continuing and starting over only if save-corrupting bug will destroy my current game rather than just giving up and going through all of this once again.

[Steve Walmsley]

"Starting again is a much safer option"

Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope and once again nope.  If that was an option this post wouldn't exist so please stop, I'm tired from all this "advice" that is anything but helpful, why every internet forum has to be like this?. . .

Back to the topic, well, I flipped the flag for Nprs and then used delete race button in game.  Performance boost was huge, sure, I got a few db errors next time I opened the game, but to be fair I had some errors popping up at random points long before this for apparently no reason at all, I got used to it, nothing seems to be affected by this change so far except my performance skyrocketed.

What could happen in the worst case? My save will blow up at some point, but that's it, so after investing a few dozen hours into it I feel like continuing and starting over only if save-corrupting bug will destroy my current game rather than just giving up and going through all of this once again.

People are trying to give you genuine advice, based on years of experience playing the game, and this is probably the most helpful forum on the internet. Any bug caused by what you did is unlikely to be a nice and obvious save blow-up, but rather something in the background that screws up the AI. A few dozen hours in this game is nothing. You could quite easily have a few hundred hours and realise all that effort was wasted because the AI wasn't working properly anyway. That is the situation that people are trying to advise against. Maybe performance is great because nothing is happening.

By all means ignore the advice and learn by experience, but don't criticize people who have been playing for a decade or more and are genuinely trying to help you avoid wasting a lot of time.

[Froggiest1982]

"Starting again is a much safer option"

Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope and once again nope.  If that was an option this post wouldn't exist so please stop, I'm tired from all this "advice" that is anything but helpful, why every internet forum has to be like this?. . .

My man, if you ask a question and you don't like the answer then there isn't much every internet forum can do for you.

You can google "Flat Earth" the sh*t out of internet but if you think that Earth is Flat you will keep avoid all the "advices" on the Earth being a sphere.

Fundamentally, regardless this being your post, it will be read by other people forever so it's important that they know how things truly are.

In this case, multiple people, but most importantly the developer of the game himself, have said starting again is a much safer option, so gues what? Starting again is a much safer option.

To do it or not is up to you, but at least we have records that nobody here has sanctioned tempering with the DB being without consequences.

[Squigles]

"Starting again is a much safer option"

Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope and once again nope.   If that was an option this post wouldn't exist so please stop, I'm tired from all this "advice" that is anything but helpful, why every internet forum has to be like this?.  .  . 

I think you're looking at this all wrong and thinking people are just "trying" to be unhelpful.  Consider it from this viewpoint.  Someone comes up and asks a group of people "how do I grab that red hot piece of metal with my bare hands and move it to that shelf?".

One person says "Soak your hands in water right before, and if you grab it with a light touch and move very quickly, you can get it to the shelf before it burns the flesh from your bones. " Literally everyone else says "Don't do it, it's extremely dangerous and while there is some kind of slim chance everything works out ok, you're much more likely to hurt yourself badly. "

The people telling you not to do it are not being unhelpful.  They're offering you sound advice for your own good.  Messing with the Aurora DB is a dangerous undertaking.  You might have a catastrophic issue that renders your game ruined immediately.  Even more likely you introduce some kind of insidious bug into the game that doesn't show up for 50 hours of gameplay before you suddenly realize your entire game is ruined.

If your will to play was destroyed because you might have lost a few play sessions worth of time starting over with less NPRs, imagine your reaction a month from now when you realize your entire game is ruined because you fiddled around in the DB.

That's not hyperbole, it's why the guy who literally makes the game advises NOT doing it.

[Stormtrooper (OP)]

To briefly sum up why I hate "advice" like that in this particular case and why the very existence of this post contradicts me ever willing to start a new game for this reason thus rendering saying "start a new game" pointless:
1) If I tinker with DB, I have some chance of not being able to play my save anymore and 100% - some chance of salvaging performance and being able to play further on that save.
2) If I start a new game, the chance of not being able to play my save anymore raises to 100%.

My goal is to still play on that save.  If it was different, I would create a new game instead of this post.  So which option should I pick up? 1), that gives me a positive chance of achieving my goal, or 2), where the chance of achieving my goal is precisely 0%?

[Droll]

This is a pointless discussion, you got what you wanted, everyone should let it rest

[Stormtrooper (OP)]

I'd bet that you spent more time asking questions and figuring it out than you would have spent setting up a new game

And you'd be correct, but you forgot that I spent way less time asking questions and figuring it out than I would playing the new game to get to the point I'm now in.

[Iceranger]

I'd bet that you spent more time asking questions and figuring it out than you would have spent setting up a new game

And you'd be correct, but you forgot that I spent way less time asking questions and figuring it out than I would playing the new game to get to the point I'm now in.

Restarting is a part of the Aurora experience. I'm sure veterans on the forum have abandoned quite a few saves with hundreds of hours. Like Steve mentioned earlier, you may or may not encounter some serious errors that make advancing time impossible after messing with the DB.

[Steve Walmsley]

To briefly sum up why I hate "advice" like that in this particular case and why the very existence of this post contradicts me ever willing to start a new game for this reason thus rendering saying "start a new game" pointless:
1) If I tinker with DB, I have some chance of not being able to play my save anymore and 100% - some chance of salvaging performance and being able to play further on that save.
2) If I start a new game, the chance of not being able to play my save anymore raises to 100%.

My goal is to still play on that save.  If it was different, I would create a new game instead of this post.  So which option should I pick up? 1), that gives me a positive chance of achieving my goal, or 2), where the chance of achieving my goal is precisely 0%?

I'll give this one last go and then, as someone suggested, I will give up

You actually have 3 choices and you don't know if you are choosing 1 or 2.

• Tinker with DB without understanding it and continue to play normally with no obvious or hidden bugs (very unlikely).
• Tinker with DB, cause a bug that screws up the AI so the game isn't working properly, but from your perspective you appear to continue to play normally. Unfortunately, you are are wasting your time because you aren't actually playing the game - it just seems like it. This has happened to me and I didn't realise until I wasted a LOT of time.
• Accept that you aren't happy with the current game and restart (which we all do - including me), in which case you can be confident that your future time will not be wasted

The premise of your question seems to include the assumption that 2 would never happen. If you had more information regarding the probability of option 2, you might choose differently.

[Stormtrooper (OP)]

No I will not choose 3 because I have only so much times for games and I'm yet to see combat although my fleet is well under development so I'd at least have some battles autoresolved fight some battles, but that's not why I'm writing this reply.

The point of this reply is: Could you share what kind of problem did you run into that wasted you "A LOT" time and how did you find out?

[Steve Walmsley]

No I will not choose 3 because I have only so much times for games and I'm yet to see combat although my fleet is well under development so I'd at least have some battles autoresolved fight some battles, but that's not why I'm writing this reply.

The point of this reply is: Could you share what kind of problem did you run into that wasted you "A LOT" time and how did you find out?

There have been a few .

The most recent was when I caused a problem with NPR capacitor tech (by altering the DB), so they all had much lower tech in capacitors than weapons. I fought against missile-armed ships for a while and only realized something was odd when I was fighting against STO and they were taking a long time to recharge . Finally I peeked at the NPR and realized the problem. Every NPR design was faulty. I could have tried to fix it by altering the database, but I knew that would cause even more problems so I restarted and recreated the game. I lost a couple of weeks, but it could have been worse. In your situation as a new player you may not have even noticed the odd STO recharge time.

The issue isn't that specific problem though as it is not likely to happen again (and was caused by me not thinking something through). The issue is that Aurora can be screwed up and you won't even know about it until a long time later, when you have invested far more effort than you already have. This normally happens when you make alterations to the DB that the game isn't intended to support.

You might get lucky in this instance and everything will be fine, or you might throw good time after bad. You really do seem keen to plough ahead though, so I can only say good luck.

[Stormtrooper (OP)]

Well, dB editing was a point of no return so I deleted another 3 aliens spanning across dozens of stars after my performance started clogging up again (yes I was that stupid that on top of starting with 3 NPR's I ticked the boxes for Nprs to generate ancients and a positive chance of them generating another npr upon system discovery). Turns out CPU really hates when you set up a game with "alive, organic universe".

Since I'm speaking with the dev might I at this point also ask what are your plans of dealing with aurora performance/how does it look for you and what pc you play on?

My observation is that the game runs super smooth as long as you're alone out there, but once you're not then all the performance can quickly get to unplayed rates.

[Droll]

Well, dB editing was a point of no return so I deleted another 3 aliens spanning across dozens of stars after my performance started clogging up again (yes I was that stupid that on top of starting with 3 NPR's I ticked the boxes for Nprs to generate ancients and a positive chance of them generating another npr upon system discovery). Turns out CPU really hates when you set up a game with "alive, organic universe".

Since I'm speaking with the dev might I at this point also ask what are your plans of dealing with aurora performance/how does it look for you and what pc you play on?

My observation is that the game runs super smooth as long as you're alone out there, but once you're not then all the performance can quickly get to unplayed rates.

The performance improvement from VB6 to C# although massive, is certainly inadequate when NPRs get involved. I've read that there were plans for 64-bit and multithreading to eventually make its way into aurora but I'll let Steve give the precise answer for that.