v2.6.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Any NPRs created as a result of exploring will be 'normal' single system NPRs. They are generated when a suitable planet is created as a result of system generation (when you or another NPRs explores a JP) and they pass the random chance text. They only exist because their home world was just created. Even if I ran the multi-system process at that point, it wouldn't make sense because they would have already explored the system you entered from and you would have met them sooner. Plus every time you would find their home world first.

The only way to really generate multi-system NPR post-start would be to generate them randomly as the game progressed. Either stand-alone in systems no one found yet, or via a tiny chance for each new system being the edge of their Empire, which would entail generating them standalone and then connecting an 'outer-ring' jump point to the system you just explored - which would be odd in Known Stars games as it would likely be an abnormal jump distance.

The better option is generating several multiple-system NPRs at game start, probably further out than normal, so you can meet them more naturally.

You don't need to specify a chance for a newly explored system to be an edge system to trigger multi-system NPR generation.
You could trigger in-game NPR generation the same way you do now, when a suitable planet is present in a newly explored and randomly generated system, and the random chance succeeds.
(Because, as you say, you can at that point generate a full multisystem NPR and link this jump point to an edge system instead of the home system.)
So the overall prevalence of in-game NPRs won't change. They'll just start living and breathing well before you reach their home system, and you won't even be aware when you trigger the creation of one. You'll just see another normal system.

Yes, that's an interesting idea. The potential downside is that in known space games, its likely the system from which the exploration is launched is a lot closer to the new home world in real space than the edge system to which the link is redirected, which might have some odd results for future connections - like any jump point explorations from existing systems close to the newly generated area (in JP terms) are more likely to connect to the centre of that area (as its closer in real space). Although only about 1 in 15 systems link to existing so it may not be very noticeable.

[skoormit]

...The potential downside is that in known space games, its likely the system from which the exploration is launched is a lot closer to the new home world in real space than the edge system to which the link is redirected, which might have some odd results for future connections - like any jump point explorations from existing systems close to the newly generated area (in JP terms) are more likely to connect to the centre of that area (as its closer in real space). Although only about 1 in 15 systems link to existing so it may not be very noticeable.

Probably unlikely to be noticed, as you say.

But even if you decide that generating multisystem NPRs after game start is only feasible in non-real-stars games--still, there would be much rejoicing.
Songs are written about such things.

[nuclearslurpee]

Yes, that's an interesting idea. The potential downside is that in known space games, its likely the system from which the exploration is launched is a lot closer to the new home world in real space than the edge system to which the link is redirected, which might have some odd results for future connections - like any jump point explorations from existing systems close to the newly generated area (in JP terms) are more likely to connect to the centre of that area (as its closer in real space). Although only about 1 in 15 systems link to existing so it may not be very noticeable.

Given that most players don't exactly have a star map of the Milky Way embedded in memory, I suspect in most cases it would not be noticeable at all. 

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

One other potential issue with in-game creation occurred to me. With the at-start creation, there are no aliens generated in the NPR territory. There can be ruins and ancient constructs, but without precursors. The starting NPR will setup research colonies if there are constructs.

I would use the same principle for in-game creation, because having precursor systems (for example) between the home world and a major colony wouldn't make sense.

However, this opens up potentially large ruins without precursors for the player to exploit, although there would probably be some NPR defenders. I'm not sure this is necessarily a problem, but it would be different than a standard game.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Yes, that's an interesting idea. The potential downside is that in known space games, its likely the system from which the exploration is launched is a lot closer to the new home world in real space than the edge system to which the link is redirected, which might have some odd results for future connections - like any jump point explorations from existing systems close to the newly generated area (in JP terms) are more likely to connect to the centre of that area (as its closer in real space). Although only about 1 in 15 systems link to existing so it may not be very noticeable.

Given that most players don't exactly have a star map of the Milky Way embedded in memory, I suspect in most cases it would not be noticeable at all. 

No, its not that. If you discover a new NPR with a radius of 6 transits, you end up connecting to a rim system. Any other jump points you explore from the initial system (or one nearby but not in NPR space) have a much greater chance of connecting to the NPR home system, or one of the core systems, rather than another edge system. That's on a per-system basis, so given there will be a lot more edge systems than core system it might not be an issue.

[nuclearslurpee]

One other potential issue with in-game creation occurred to me. With the at-start creation, there are no aliens generated in the NPR territory. There can be ruins and ancient constructs, but without precursors. The starting NPR will setup research colonies if there are constructs.

I would use the same principle for in-game creation, because having precursor systems (for example) between the home world and a major colony wouldn't make sense.

However, this opens up potentially large ruins without precursors for the player to exploit, although there would probably be some NPR defenders. I'm not sure this is necessarily a problem, but it would be different than a standard game.

As long as the NPR has appropriate xeno and survey ground units on-site, I would expect them to exploit most of those ruins before the player can survey to that area, especially if the ruins are on the "far side" of the generated jump network. That leaves a potentially vulnerable construct, but that's not much different from the situation with existing NPR empires anyways except that it might be better-defended if anything.

[mike2R]

Man I love the idea of having this for explored NPRs...  (Not that having it for starting NPRs isn't great on its own  )

I don't think it needs to be perfectly balanced if this would take a bunch of extra work.  Just having the option available, even with a few oddities, would be amazing!

I sometimes like playing with no starting NPRs and NPR exploration chance at 0.  Then turn up the exploration chance once I've built up an established multi-system empire.  Great if I feel like more of a sprawling space opera game.  Being able to set it up so that the NPRs that got generated later on were big established empires would be absolutely incredible...

[KriegsMeister]

Could you use the same mechanic as a Player race game start option as well? Give us an option to start at an early-mid game empire level without having to spend hours spacemastering a similar setup.

Also, I think one way you could get non-game start NPR empires to work is that when a new race is generated and designated as an empire, that race explores all jumppoints in that system and then randomly picks ONE! that is not the JP the discovering race entered through, to then back explore. It continues to explore only one jump point back in a chain length based on the empire radius, until it discovers another suitable homeworld and from there it will spiderweb back out using the regular empire generator. A few caveats: (1) If no suitable world is found within the jump chain once it reaches its limit, one will be generated (2) If a JP leads to an already known system of any race, it stops exploring beyond the exit JP (3) If the initial chain ends up being a dead end before reaching its max length, it can go back one system and explore another JP

[Rabid_Cog]

Could you use the same mechanic as a Player race game start option as well? Give us an option to start at an early-mid game empire level without having to spend hours spacemastering a similar setup.

Also, I think one way you could get non-game start NPR empires to work is that when a new race is generated and designated as an empire, that race explores all jumppoints in that system and then randomly picks ONE! that is not the JP the discovering race entered through, to then back explore. It continues to explore only one jump point back in a chain length based on the empire radius, until it discovers another suitable homeworld and from there it will spiderweb back out using the regular empire generator. A few caveats: (1) If no suitable world is found within the jump chain once it reaches its limit, one will be generated (2) If a JP leads to an already known system of any race, it stops exploring beyond the exit JP (3) If the initial chain ends up being a dead end before reaching its max length, it can go back one system and explore another JP

This kind of process occurred to me as well, when you described the issues with creating multi-system empires in Real Stars games. You could keep the system that you rolled the NPR generation in as a non-homeworld and take a 'pathfinding' approach with system generation to find the homeworld, then generate the empire from there as normal. In this case, there is no reason why you wouldn't be able to run into a new NPR in a Starless Nexus, even, so instead of NPR having a, say 25% chance of generating for each habitable world you find, you would instead have a 0.5% of generating one for each SYSTEM you find.

If the system fails to find a habitable world in the X jumps you specify, you can either abort the NPR generation process, pretend it never happened, or delete everything and try again. Or some combined method where you do, say, 5 retries and if none succeed, cancel it, delete the generated systems and skip NPR generation.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Could you use the same mechanic as a Player race game start option as well? Give us an option to start at an early-mid game empire level without having to spend hours spacemastering a similar setup.

Also, I think one way you could get non-game start NPR empires to work is that when a new race is generated and designated as an empire, that race explores all jumppoints in that system and then randomly picks ONE! that is not the JP the discovering race entered through, to then back explore. It continues to explore only one jump point back in a chain length based on the empire radius, until it discovers another suitable homeworld and from there it will spiderweb back out using the regular empire generator. A few caveats: (1) If no suitable world is found within the jump chain once it reaches its limit, one will be generated (2) If a JP leads to an already known system of any race, it stops exploring beyond the exit JP (3) If the initial chain ends up being a dead end before reaching its max length, it can go back one system and explore another JP

The problem with trying to generate a new similar home world is that a species is based on its home world environment, so finding another exact match is very unlikely.

If I do go down this route, I will use Skoormit's suggestion, as that is very straightforward. Essentially, once a home world is discovered, break the link from the 'exploring' system, generate the Empire, and then link the exploring system to a system on the edge of the NPR Empire. For known systems, I would probably order them in real space distance and then link one of the closest ones.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I've added multi-system NPRs post-start. This does lead to a slight problem, which is a likely pause for a few seconds while a multi-system NPR is generated. That pause between transit and arrival can effectively warn a player than an NPR has been created. Therefore I was wondering whether to add random pauses to some system generations, to make it less obvious when something is actually happening. Or would this just be annoying?

[paolot]

I feel random pauses could become annoying if long turn calculations (in mid- and end-game phases) will disappear.
Otherwise, no, they could be acceptable.

Please, an explanation and a question about post-start multi-system NPR.
Requested explanation: If we want large multisystem empire(s) at start, we set non zero values for at least one of NPR Base Explored Transits, NPR Random Explored Transits and NPR Max Start Systems parameters.
But this new addiction will also cause generation of post-start multi-system NPRs. So, I understand that we will never again meet single system NPRs, apart minor races: is it correct?
Question: how many systems will each post-start NPR control/know?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I feel random pauses could become annoying if long turn calculations (in mid- and end-game phases) will disappear.
Otherwise, no, they could be acceptable.

Please, an explanation and a question about post-start multi-system NPR.
Requested explanation: If we want large multisystem empire(s) at start, we set non zero values for at least one of NPR Base Explored Transits, NPR Random Explored Transits and NPR Max Start Systems parameters.
But this new addiction will also cause generation of post-start multi-system NPRs. So, I understand that we will never again meet single system NPRs, apart minor races: is it correct?
Question: how many systems will each post-start NPR control/know?

If you set all the parameters to zero, you will have single-system NPRs. If you set either the Base Explored or Random Explored to a positive number, you will have multi-system NPRs. The Minor Race option is checked first during race generation, so if you set that parameter, you will still have minor races with one system in a game with otherwise multi-system NPRs.

You can change the parameters at any time, so you could generate multi-system NPRs at start and then just set everything to zero.

If you want some small NPRs and some large, leave the Base at zero and only use Random.

The number of systems per NPR will depend on a combination of the parameter settings and the systems generation. For example, if you set Base to 5 and Random to zero, an NPR will do five rounds of outward jump point exploration. It might only have a few systems. It might find a hundred or more. The Max Systems option is for you to control that upper number if desired.

[paolot]

Thank you, Steve.
I can't wait to test these new mechanics!

[Ragnarsson]

I've added multi-system NPRs post-start. This does lead to a slight problem, which is a likely pause for a few seconds while a multi-system NPR is generated. That pause between transit and arrival can effectively warn a player than an NPR has been created. Therefore I was wondering whether to add random pauses to some system generations, to make it less obvious when something is actually happening. Or would this just be annoying?

In the existing 2.5.1 game I already experience a pause of sufficient length during transit of an unexplored jump point to warn me of a newly generated NPR when that occurs; as such, from my perspective, a pause of a few seconds to generate a multi-system NPR changes nothing.

That said, I would personally be in favor of a slight pause each time a new system is explored by the player. As long as the pause is no more than a few seconds it shouldn't be terribly disruptive while providing a greater air of mystery and the potential for truly unexpected encounters. Otherwise we have perfect knowledge that down that road lies a potential danger, making the ultimate encounter anti-climactic.

It's hard to tell how it'll 'feel' unless or until it's implemented, and if it feels too irritating during your own play testing or the feedback given by other players upon release it could be easily removed or altered.