In the past, it was common for players to roleplay as a pacifist race which did not start building any military units until first contact, or sometimes until first hostile contact.
However, since the introduction of Raiders, I have not seen this kind of RP setting very much and it seems almost impossible to pull off as long as Raiders are turned on, since unlike most other threats in the game they can immediately appear in an undefended core system, including Sol itself, and take over once they find no opposition. Even Swarm, Invaders, or extremely hostile NPRs once encountered take some time to survey towards Sol before they can effect a game over, and for spoiler threats the distance at which a threat can materialize can be more or less controlled by the number of systems game rule (which isn't as effective for Raiders since they can spawn into any system immediately).
So, I am wondering if anyone has had success playing a pacifist setting with the Raiders active, or otherwise how people are working around this problem. I imagine the option of playing with a limited military is in play, but that's not what I'm interested in here. So far, the apparent solution seems to be turning Raiders on only once some other (hostile) alien presence is encountered and military buildup is underway, which is a bit gamey but I suppose works fine otherwise.
Hi Nuclear,
With the "default" settings, the short answer is no. However, as you mentioned, adjusting the settings for when raiders and other threats can spawn does change things. If you set the number of systems between 30 and 50 for raiders to appear, and considering that Swarm (at least in my games) has a very low spawn rate, chances are you won't encounter raiders before encountering precursors or the swarm. A setting of 30 still gives a 60%/40% chance, while 50 guarantees 100% on real star starts. I'm not sure about non-real star settings, as I don't use them.
You could try running a few simulations on an empty database just for fun to find the most acceptable number in case 50 proves too large in scale. Please bear in mind that I don’t use any spoilers other than the ones already mentioned.
There's another trick you could use to keep the system numbers at a minimum: temporarily increase the chance for ruin generation. This would also favor the creation of precursors over NPRs. If you don’t want the precursors too close by, you can set the ruin generation to 40% or 50%, with the Raiders set to the "default" 10 or 15.
Personally, I usually set Raiders to at least 25, with 30 being my "norm." I find that a setting of 10 makes the game overly militarized. I don’t recall an instance where Raiders appeared before the Precursors or showed up in Sol right away. Even when that happens, I'm usually able to roll out my first strike group of fighters within a year of the unfortunate discovery, even with limited admin resources.
