Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: January 05, 2010, 09:30:04 AM »Quote from: "ZimRathbone"
would it be possible to change Racial status (in SM mode obviously) - ie start off with NPRs in Player control mode and subsequently assign them to AI control mode and vice versa? There would of course be some issues with this (you would have to be able to see the existence of all races in SM mode again, as opposed to the curent situation where you dont know how many races are out there).The main problem is that the NPR code currently relies on certain things being done in the NPR setup and knows what is possible within NPR ship design. It's very easy to convert an NPR to a player. It would probably cause bugs at the moment turning a player race into an NPR. As the AI code is capable of dealing with more and more things, that should become possible eventually.
The reason I ask is that I did carry out your suggested method a few campaigns ago, but found that I was overwhelmed with minor races after about 15-20 years. I would possibly have kept going futher had I been able to hive off some of the smaller ones (then again it was a particularly fecund galaxy - practically everyone who developed WP tech found another race within 2-3 jumps)
Steve