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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 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)
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.

Steve
Posted by: Brian Neumann
« on: January 05, 2010, 07:58:30 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 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)

One way to reduce the problems with this is to make the nprs automatically somewhat smaller than the races that are intended to be the primary races.  On the game details screen you can reduce the chance of their being an npr, and you can change the relative size of the npr.  If you make them 50% of normal size, they will not be expanding much to start with and their tech will be more limited as they would have a smaller population.

It is not a perfect fix, but it should help while you try to get a handle on all the other races out their.

Brian
Posted by: ZimRathbone
« on: January 05, 2010, 07:21:12 AM »

Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "Kurt"
I'm not sure what I'm going to do in this campaign, as, unlike SA, Aurora will not allow me to directly control the NPR.  I can, of course, generate a new NPR for my control, but autogenerated NPR's are under computer control and I cannot influence their behavior so that they act like the races I want them to be.  I am still bouncing around in my head the possibilities.  
You can create an SA-style game by turning off the NPRs and playing every race. SA didn't have any Aurora-style NPRs, as there was no AI, so in effect, every SA race was a player race as it was down to the player to control them. Aurora was exactly the same until the computer-controlled NPRs were added.

I am coming to the conclusion that the best way to play an Aurora campaign intended for fiction write-ups may be to play the main race plus the primary adversaries and have the NPRs to add colour as minor races where required. If you want to generate new 'player races' mid-campaign just turn off the 'Generate new races as NPRs' option on the Game window

Steve

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 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)
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: December 26, 2009, 10:22:00 AM »

Quote from: "Kurt"
I'm not sure what I'm going to do in this campaign, as, unlike SA, Aurora will not allow me to directly control the NPR.  I can, of course, generate a new NPR for my control, but autogenerated NPR's are under computer control and I cannot influence their behavior so that they act like the races I want them to be.  I am still bouncing around in my head the possibilities.  
You can create an SA-style game by turning off the NPRs and playing every race. SA didn't have any Aurora-style NPRs, as there was no AI, so in effect, every SA race was a player race as it was down to the player to control them. Aurora was exactly the same until the computer-controlled NPRs were added.

I am coming to the conclusion that the best way to play an Aurora campaign intended for fiction write-ups may be to play the main race plus the primary adversaries and have the NPRs to add colour as minor races where required. If you want to generate new 'player races' mid-campaign just turn off the 'Generate new races as NPRs' option on the Game window

Steve
Posted by: Shinanygnz
« on: December 22, 2009, 01:03:48 PM »

Great write up Kurt, as usual.  :)

Certainly be interesting to see how such a large starting pop and the high tech ships work out.

The Haggi will eventually make a comeback too, once I know what I'm doing better.  Getting there with the test campaign I've been messing about with.

Stephen
Posted by: Kurt
« on: December 22, 2009, 08:12:02 AM »

Quote from: "ZimRathbone"
Wonderful, another Kurtish Saga!

looking forward the new stories.  Is this going to be a single race story, or , like Phoenix, a multi race epic ?

Aurora is quite a bit more complex than SA, so I'm going try to stick with a single race, at least right now.  I may introduce another player race later, as the campaign develops, but we'll see.  After the Six Powers Campaign I was kind of looking forward to just running one race!

Kurt
Posted by: Kurt
« on: December 22, 2009, 08:08:11 AM »

Quote from: "Beersatron"
Great start! :)

Have you thought about how you can 'stumble' on pockets of the old Terran Empire and amalgamating them into the Empire through diplomacy or force of arms?

i.e.
Will you use SM mode to add colonies and fleets to a random system every now and then, keeping them under your control, roleplaying out a scenario to bring them under the banner of Terra?

Or maybe generate the pocket and put it under NPR control (I think you can do that, right?) and just go with what Aurora decides to do? You can maybe change the standings factor in the database so that a pocket will 'like' you from the start and give you trade.

and
Quote from: "Truezuluwiz"
Got to wonder how many pocket "Empires" are out there.............. Plus the Bugs, never forget the Bugs. And the Gorandans. And all the rest.

What you suggest above, Beersatron, is exactly what I did in the Phoenix Campaign.  I had a table, and everytime anyone entered a new system I rolled percentage dice.  If forget what the exact percentage was, but if the first roll was something like, say, 20% or less, then the system was known during the Terran Campaign and I rolled on the table to determine what was in the system.  The possible results ranged from dead worlds to colonies gone horribly wrong.  The possibility also existed to find the homeworlds of the various species as well.  

I'm not sure what I'm going to do in this campaign, as, unlike SA, Aurora will not allow me to directly control the NPR.  I can, of course, generate a new NPR for my control, but autogenerated NPR's are under computer control and I cannot influence their behavior so that they act like the races I want them to be.  I am still bouncing around in my head the possibilities.  

Kurt
Posted by: Kurt
« on: December 22, 2009, 08:01:08 AM »

Quote from: "ShadoCat"
Really nice.

I'm looking forward to more.  Steve's fiction and yours are what got me interested in Starfire (and now Aurora) in the first place.

Thanks - that's nice of you to say.  Steve and I go way back, as I said in the intro to this campaign, seeing the response to the his first post of the Rigellian campaign was what convinced me to start doing my own write-ups.  

Kurt
Posted by: Kurt
« on: December 22, 2009, 07:58:42 AM »

Quote from: "Sotak246"
Very impressive write up and history.  I loved your phoenix campaign and always wondered what you did with the Sol system.  I am looking forward to the follow ups.

Mark

Thanks.  When I started researching this one, I realized that I never fleshed out the Empire very much in the Terran Campaign, perhaps because I was so new at writing at that time.  I've been excited to do this campaign, as it goes back to my roots, so to speak.  

Kurt
Posted by: ZimRathbone
« on: December 21, 2009, 10:51:28 PM »

Wonderful, another Kurtish Saga!

looking forward the new stories.  Is this going to be a single race story, or , like Phoenix, a multi race epic ?
Posted by: Beersatron
« on: December 21, 2009, 08:41:00 PM »

Great start! :)

Have you thought about how you can 'stumble' on pockets of the old Terran Empire and amalgamating them into the Empire through diplomacy or force of arms?

i.e.
Will you use SM mode to add colonies and fleets to a random system every now and then, keeping them under your control, roleplaying out a scenario to bring them under the banner of Terra?

Or maybe generate the pocket and put it under NPR control (I think you can do that, right?) and just go with what Aurora decides to do? You can maybe change the standings factor in the database so that a pocket will 'like' you from the start and give you trade.
Posted by: ShadoCat
« on: December 21, 2009, 07:18:38 PM »

Really nice.

I'm looking forward to more.  Steve's fiction and yours are what got me interested in Starfire (and now Aurora) in the first place.
Posted by: TrueZuluwiz
« on: December 21, 2009, 06:23:06 PM »

Got to wonder how many pocket "Empires" are out there.............. Plus the Bugs, never forget the Bugs. And the Gorandans. And all the rest.
Posted by: Sotak246
« on: December 21, 2009, 04:45:56 PM »

Very impressive write up and history.  I loved your phoenix campaign and always wondered what you did with the Sol system.  I am looking forward to the follow ups.

Mark
Posted by: Kurt
« on: December 21, 2009, 03:40:00 PM »

Quote from: "waresky"
Compliment Kurt.Impressive history lifespan..

Thanks.  In one way or another, I've been working on the Terran Empire for a long time.

Kurt