Finding alien races

[Father Tim]

So, does that mean there is no chance of Methane-breathing alien races or do they use the same formula just with 'Methane' in place of 'Oxygen'?

At the moment Methane races can only be created using the Create Empire button. I wanted to leave them as a manual option for a while to ensure they were no problems. I suppose one drawback to that approach is that if no one creates them I won't find out about any problems . I may try running one in my current campaign and assuming no problems I'll add them to the system generation.

Steve

My 'PC' empire has been one for a while now, with no problems other than having no other methane-breathing races to interact with.  Opressing the "pink-skins" isn't as much fun through SCBA gear.  I haven't encountered any naturally-occuring ruins on a methane atmosphere planet yet, which I presume is due to the above.  Methane planets also tend to have the dangerous gas Ammonia in the atmosphere QUITE a lot, which isn't a problem per se, but does require methane-breathers to invest heavily in Terraforming and/or Infrastructure.

[ZimRathbone]

When you say habs so you mean ideal habitable worlds (0 colony cost)?

Ruins are checked first (20% chance) and if the planet has ruins then it won't have an alien race. That is probably skewing the numbers. I have checked through the code I can't find any problems but I will step it through on the next few system generations and see if I can spot anything weird. What is supposed to happen is the following:

A check is made for ruins if the planet is terrestrial, the gravity is greater than 0.4G and the temperature is between 200 and 360 Kelvin

A check is made for an alien race if the planet is terrestrial and there are no ruins and the oxygen level is between 0.07 and 0.4 atm and there are no dangerous gases and temperature is between 233 and 333 Kelvin and the gravity is between 0.4 and 2.5G.

Steve

No by Habs I meant Oxy-Nitro worlds - I will check to see of they fell within the other params you mention above.

OK have now done checks.

In 77 Systems there were 49 oxy/nitro T worlds.

Putting in the Physical restrictions (G & Temp) brings that down to 19 candidates.

The Oxy level restriction brings that down to 8 of which 3 were terraformed to reach acceptable levels (and therefore probably lay outside the requirements at the point of generation), and 1 had a Ruin in place.  I checked and the other 3 ruins i'd found were on planets that either had very low levels of oxygen or temps that were between 200 and 233 or 334 and 360, and therefore wouldn't have qualified as potential race-bearing planets.

This gives 4 potential candidates, 3 of which were found after the race chance increased (the one that was found before the chance increased was actually set as the racial homeworld), and 1 actually had a race.

So the actual percentage found was 33% compared to the parameter setting of 50% which at that low a population is more than acceptable.

It seems that the chance of good real estate is much lower than I thought, not that the race generation code is faulty.

[jfelten]

All I can add is that in the new test game I started this week, the 2nd system I explored had a NPR.  Unfortunately it was pre TN and is fairly small.  I set them to researching TN and they eventually finished that, but they are so small I'll probably just go toss some ground troops at them soon and see how the ground combat system works.  Glancing at the diplomacy window I didn't see any sort of Amalgamation state so I'm assuming the only way to actually take control of an NPR is to conquer them.

[jfelten]

This is a question.  I'm not sure this is the best place for it, but I didn't see a better one.  

It may be a matter of personal preference, but when encountering a neutral race, do most people use the button to give that race HW resources, or do you just leave them with whatever they randomly start with?

[Erik L]

This is a question.  I'm not sure this is the best place for it, but I didn't see a better one.  

It may be a matter of personal preference, but when encountering a neutral race, do most people use the button to give that race HW resources, or do you just leave them with whatever they randomly start with?

All depends on how I want to play them. If they look like a good adversary with tech and the like, then I'll give them HW minerals. Unless their world is stocked sufficiently with most. Then I'll let them work around it.

[Steve Walmsley]

This is a question.  I'm not sure this is the best place for it, but I didn't see a better one.  

It may be a matter of personal preference, but when encountering a neutral race, do most people use the button to give that race HW resources, or do you just leave them with whatever they randomly start with?

When the program creates a race during system generation, it updates the mineral generation to give them homeworld minerals. Obviously this is still random within the homeworld mineral generation parameters so depending on personal preference you might want to regenerate them or modify the results.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

All I can add is that in the new test game I started this week, the 2nd system I explored had a NPR.  Unfortunately it was pre TN and is fairly small.  I set them to researching TN and they eventually finished that, but they are so small I'll probably just go toss some ground troops at them soon and see how the ground combat system works.  Glancing at the diplomacy window I didn't see any sort of Amalgamation state so I'm assuming the only way to actually take control of an NPR is to conquer them.

There is no amalgamation at the moment although I need to update the diplomacy code so I will probably add something along those lines at some point. However, even in this case, populations of different species on the same planet will not be joined together because of their different habitability tolerances.

At the moment you can either conquer a population through ground combat or bombard them until they surrender. The latter case isn't that useful if you are planning on using the planet afterwards

Steve

[schroeam]

There is no amalgamation at the moment although I need to update the diplomacy code so I will probably add something along those lines at some point. However, even in this case, populations of different species on the same planet will not be joined together because of their different habitability tolerances.

At the moment you can either conquer a population through ground combat or bombard them until they surrender. The latter case isn't that useful if you are planning on using the planet afterwards :x   What if there were two races, actual races not just countries, that developed on the same planet.  Say humans and neandrethals.  Could they both be amalgamated as long as their tolerances were similar enough?  Also, could there be a way to specify aquatic species?  They could still require an Oxygen/Nitrogen atmosphere, but also require oceans to live in.  Just a thought ...

Adam.

[Erik L]

You can also create an empire on a suitable planet from SM Mode in the F9 view.

[Steve Walmsley]

I was actually thinking about this earlier today while shoveling snow. :idea: ...

If two species are created on the same planet, their baseline will be the same but their tolerances limits could be quite different, to the extent there may be planets on which one could live but the other could never live, even with terraforming (because of gravitational tolerance). If their tolerences were the same though I can't see why they couldn't be amagamated at some point.

An aquatic species is an interesting idea. It could be done as simply as adding a requirement for an ocean to their normal tolerances, although Aurora really should be generating oceans on all oxy-nitro worlds. It doesn't because there is a bug I haven't pinned down yet but it isn't affected gameplay at the moment.

Steve

[Father Tim]

By 'oceans' do you mean the Hydrosphere options of Ice sheet / liquid water / none?  Because it might help your bug tracking to know that I noticed during terraforming operations that raising a planet's temp over 0C melted the ice sheets, but dropping a wet world to -7C for one of my cold-loving races didn't freeze the planet.  It seems oncethe hydrosphere becomes liquid water it stays that way (and I'm pretty sure I couldn't 'boil off' the hydrosphere from another planet).

[Steve Walmsley]

By 'oceans' do you mean the Hydrosphere options of Ice sheet / liquid water / none?  Because it might help your bug tracking to know that I noticed during terraforming operations that raising a planet's temp over 0C melted the ice sheets, but dropping a wet world to -7C for one of my cold-loving races didn't freeze the planet.  It seems oncethe hydrosphere becomes liquid water it stays that way (and I'm pretty sure I couldn't 'boil off' the hydrosphere from another planet).

Yes it is hydrosphere I mean. It should melt around -18C because I am basing it on the freezing point of salt water rather than fresh water. Different oceans have different salinity levels but the lowest freezing point you can get with saltwater is -21C based on the maximum saturation of salt so I went for a little higher than that. It's generous to the races that like higher temperature but it makes it easier for them to get ideal worlds. I checked and I haven't coded a refreezing yet.

Steve

[schroeam]

If two species are created on the same planet, their baseline will be the same but their tolerances limits could be quite different, to the extent there may be planets on which one could live but the other could never live, even with terraforming (because of gravitational tolerance). If their tolerences were the same though I can't see why they couldn't be amagamated at some point.

An aquatic species is an interesting idea. It could be done as simply as adding a requirement for an ocean to their normal tolerances, although Aurora really should be generating oceans on all oxy-nitro worlds. It doesn't because there is a bug I haven't pinned down yet but it isn't affected gameplay at the moment.

Steve

I figured as much with the different species, but since I haven't played where I have conquered a different species yet, is there a way to identify ideal worlds for conquered races that have improved their status in the empire where they may be able to colonize other worlds?  I assume that the ideal world the program will look for is the controlling race's.  Maybe an option to select different race tolerances in the system view screen to identify worlds suitable for subject races?  This would allow for as optimized colonization of a system as possible, to include planets not normally colonizable by the senior race, thereby increasing the tax revenue for the empire.

Adam.

[Steve Walmsley]

I figured as much with the different species, but since I haven't played where I have conquered a different species yet, is there a way to identify ideal worlds for conquered races that have improved their status in the empire where they may be able to colonize other worlds?  I assume that the ideal world the program will look for is the controlling race's.  Maybe an option to select different race tolerances in the system view screen to identify worlds suitable for subject races?  This would allow for as optimized colonization of a system as possible, to include planets not normally colonizable by the senior race, thereby increasing the tax revenue for the empire.

On the F9 System View in the top right, the F11 Galactic Map in the top left and the Ctrl-A Available Colony window in the top right, there are Species dropdowns. These are set to the dominant species of your Empire but any other species in your Empire are also in the dropdown. If you select a different species, you will see the universe through their eyes, based on their environmental tolerences.

Steve

[schroeam]

On the F9 System View in the top right, the F11 Galactic Map in the top left and the Ctrl-A Available Colony window in the top right, there are Species dropdowns. These are set to the dominant species of your Empire but any other species in your Empire are also in the dropdown. If you select a different species, you will see the universe through their eyes, based on their environmental tolerences.

Steve

Thanks,

Adam.