Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: ChubbyPitbull on May 17, 2010, 09:47:09 AM
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Just starting out in Aurora, and had some questions about "NPR" generation.
If you generate NPRs at the start, do they all start with the same tech points/population/power/etc? Is there a/what is the default level they start at?
I believe I read on the forums that any settings you make in a new game won't affect automatically generated NPRs (ie: if your empire is conventional, everyone else will still be Trans Newtonian). Is it possible to have several AI players start at the same level you are (conventional perhaps) using Designer mode?
I also read that any new NPRs that are "discovered" on the fly are generated based on the player's empire size and power. Does this mean that odds are no matter how big you are, any NPR you encounter will be more or less the same size/power as the player?
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Pretty much, yeah.
With different tech allocation.
No idea about what you can actually change in Designermode.
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There is no logic code to enable an NPR start from Conventional.
Designer Mode is for Steve only, and he has stated before that he will not be providing this to other users. The NPR logic relies on a number of factors that are not shown to the user, so if you tried using Designer Mode then the chances are you could inadvertently change something for the worse.
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Pretty much, yeah.
With different tech allocation.
No idea about what you can actually change in Designermode.
You can change the NPRs, precursors etc in Designer Mode. However, if you change anything using Designer Mode, Steve will not guarantee that the change won''t screw anything else up. Also, Steve will not bug fix DBs that have been screwed up through the use of Designer Mode. Designer Mode is useful if you are nosey and would like to see why you have slowed to 5s automatic increments as 2 NPRs slug it out and that's about all it should be used for.
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Ah, righto, thank you. Maybe I got the modes wrong? What inspired me to play the game was binging through all of Steve's Trans-Newtonian game AAR, and I liked the idea of having several civilizations with the minimum tech just starting to enter space, even with the base Trans-Newtonian tech (for now each one having their own system, after I get more experience I'd try out the several-power-blocs-on-one-planet game). Is that doable in SM mode? Having to re-install Aurora due to changing something that hosed the DB seems like an acceptable penalty.
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Three things:
1) The multi-empire conventional start in Steve's campaign used player races, not NPR. In other words, Steve role-played all the power blocs.
2) SM mode is intended to let you "edit" empire setups. Think "Space Master", as in "Dungeon Master" in D&D.
3) The entire state of the game is in the DB. So you don't need to do a reinstall to clean up - you just have to overwrite the DB with a "clean" one from the appropriate release.
John
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Righto, thanks for the help everyone!
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I also read that any new NPRs that are "discovered" on the fly are generated based on the player's empire size and power. Does this mean that odds are no matter how big you are, any NPR you encounter will be more or less the same size/power as the player?
Its based on a bell curve with the average player race pop as the centre of the curve. This allows you to create games with very different starting sizes and still have challenging NPRs.
Steve
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Playing a game where I had the setup to 40% generation from the player and 15% from other NPR's, 1 NPR on start and all other setting the default (min 25LY and 50Max). So far I am 80 years into my game and the only Aliens I have met are precursors (4 of them so far). Given I have 91 systems and 71 of them are surveyed its getting a little boring not having anyone to face. This is the second game in a row where this has occurred and I am wondering if I am doing anything wrong. I was expecting to come across other "Empires" to fight.
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Playing a game where I had the setup to 40% generation from the player and 15% from other NPR's, 1 NPR on start and all other setting the default (min 25LY and 50Max). So far I am 80 years into my game and the only Aliens I have met are precursors (4 of them so far). Given I have 91 systems and 71 of them are surveyed its getting a little boring not having anyone to face. This is the second game in a row where this has occurred and I am wondering if I am doing anything wrong. I was expecting to come across other "Empires" to fight.
I generally start with more NPRs. In my current game I have 5 NPRs. I'm ten years in and I have met four NPRs, precursors, the new raiders and a pre-industrial race. I have explored 128 systems though so I am exploring much faster than the above.
Generating a new NPR is actually a rare event, because the conditions required for a suitable world are needed before the generation chance is applied.
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Playing a game where I had the setup to 40% generation from the player and 15% from other NPR's, 1 NPR on start and all other setting the default (min 25LY and 50Max). So far I am 80 years into my game and the only Aliens I have met are precursors (4 of them so far). Given I have 91 systems and 71 of them are surveyed its getting a little boring not having anyone to face. This is the second game in a row where this has occurred and I am wondering if I am doing anything wrong. I was expecting to come across other "Empires" to fight.
The chance of discovery by NPRs is very uneven. I remember seeing several posts where people get discovered by an NPR within the first ~5 years of a campaign, even with higher than default starting distance.
For your game I would increase the player-NPR generation to 70-90%.
This is because of how rare suitable NPR planets are, if you find one then you want it to spawn an NPR, with a small failure chance to add some uncertainty (this is less necessary if, like me, you don't know the parameters within which NPRs can spawn).
I would also reduce the NPR-NPR generation to 0%, and turn off NPRs trigger spoilers.
This is to ensure that the starting NPR doesn't get tied up in a war, and can put as much effort as possible into exploring and eventually finding you.
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This is because of how rare suitable NPR planets are, if you find one then you want it to spawn an NPR, with a small failure chance to add some uncertainty (this is less necessary if, like me, you don't know the parameters within which NPRs can spawn).
The requirements for NPR generation are:
- Surface Temp between -40C and 60C
- Gravity between 0.3G and 2.5G
- Hydro Extent of 5% or greater
- No Dangerous Gases
- Oxygen between 0.05 atm and 0.5 atm and no more than 30% of total atmosphere
- Orbital Distance less than 80 AU of primary - or equivalent if LG available
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This is because of how rare suitable NPR planets are, if you find one then you want it to spawn an NPR, with a small failure chance to add some uncertainty (this is less necessary if, like me, you don't know the parameters within which NPRs can spawn).
The requirements for NPR generation are:
- Surface Temp between -40C and 60C
- Gravity between 0.3G and 2.5G
- Hydro Extent of 5% or greater
- No Dangerous Gases
- Oxygen between 0.05 atm and 0.5 atm and no more than 30% of total atmosphere
- Orbital Distance less than 80 AU of primary - or equivalent if LG available
Wait so what happens when an NPR homeworld has between 5%-20% hydro as under this it could be "suitable" for NPR generation.
Wouldn't their homeworld have a colonization cost as all races in this game need 20% hydro?
Also "No Dangerous Gases" doesn't seem to be properly enforced as I have seen chlorine gas appear on NPR homeworlds that I've had to SM away.
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I suppose this is more of a suggestion, but I think it's too bad that aliens can't be generated with tolerances that humans can't …um… tolerate.
Who's to say that the multi-headed squid thing from Rigel II doesn't like to wake up to a whiff of chorine in their atmosphere? Or that the rock-beasts of Epsilon don't prefer the heady scent of hydrogen sulphide?
It'd make taking over their planets a bit of a headache, but that's part of the fun!
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Given that ruin generation prevents NPR generation on a habitable planet, which roll is made first? If I set both generation settings at 100%, will NPRs never generate and only ruins or the other way around?
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I also read that any new NPRs that are "discovered" on the fly are generated based on the player's empire size and power. Does this mean that odds are no matter how big you are, any NPR you encounter will be more or less the same size/power as the player?
Its based on a bell curve with the average player race pop as the centre of the curve. This allows you to create games with very different starting sizes and still have challenging NPRs.
Steve
Could we have a game start option to shift the bell curve for NPRs? Shifting it 0.1 SD or multiples thereof would let you tailor the NPR challenge a bit, without otherwise impacting on them and allows a bit more finetuning outside of spoilers. Turn it down for a pacifist run, up for a "pacifist" run (it's technically peace when everyone else is dead, right?)
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I also read that any new NPRs that are "discovered" on the fly are generated based on the player's empire size and power. Does this mean that odds are no matter how big you are, any NPR you encounter will be more or less the same size/power as the player?
Its based on a bell curve with the average player race pop as the centre of the curve. This allows you to create games with very different starting sizes and still have challenging NPRs.
Steve
Could we have a game start option to shift the bell curve for NPRs? Shifting it 0. 1 SD or multiples thereof would let you tailor the NPR challenge a bit, without otherwise impacting on them and allows a bit more finetuning outside of spoilers. Turn it down for a pacifist run, up for a "pacifist" run (it's technically peace when everyone else is dead, right?)
Bear in mind the statement you quoted is 12 years old now - this thread was first created in 2010 then necro'd. This might still be accurate for C# - but it may not.
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The changes from VB6>>C# are pretty well documented, and I don't remember seeing anything about changes in NPR generation, which while not conclusive, is a pretty good hint, I think. I can't think of any particular reason not to have ported it straight over either. If there has been a change, then yes, it's a pointless request, but if it does still work that way, I do think it would make a neat way to tweak challenge without using the blunt instrument of spoilers
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Doesn't the difficulty percentage do that already?
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AFAIK, the diff %age acts as a multiplier to the rolled stats of an NPR, not a shift in the range of the roll. Depending on how things actually work, that may end up being about the same thing, but I don't think it's ever been publicly established what the NPR generation black box actually contains, so it's hard to make a direct comparison
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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.
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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.