Posted by: Droll
« on: March 23, 2022, 11:50:56 PM »The difficulty modifier acts as a multiplier to the mean of the NPR population distribution, in fact that is as far as I know its sole function as every other starting value is directly set by the initial population. There is no accessible control of the distribution spread/deviation otherwise.
Due to caps on some installations, notably research labs, the resulting actual NPR difficulty is often not as high as you would expect if you use >100%, an issue which is finally being rectified by Steve in v2.0.
One other thing to note is that NPR populations will no longer exceed the carrying capacity of their homeworld either in 2.0. So they are somewhat nerfed in that aspect.