I can't play Aurora at the moment, so I want to think and ask questions about it instead. . .
Are the AI players in Aurora limited in exactly the same ways that the human player is? Does the AI "cheat", basically?
Many, many games get around the difficulty of providing a challenging AI by giving it production bonuses (not always just at higher difficulty levels), or by letting the AI automatically know where hidden resources are, or by not having the AI ever run out of money, and so on and so forth.
For example, there was a version of Civilization where the AI knew exactly where all the as-of-yet undiscovered strategic resources were, so their settlers would make a beeline for them.
I have very limited exposure to NPRs yet, in my single game of Aurora (I'm only four years in!), but I hope they have to do all the things we do, like mine, tax, build, survey, research, etc.
I don't mind if there are more advanced civilizations (and I know there are, like the Wossnames, and the Thingies). The system next door to mine met my lone, unarmed scout with thirty-eight 600-ton ships that were sitting right next to the jump point I used. I suppose it's possible that I too could have built such an armada of small ships in such a short space of time, if that was pretty much all I'd done. . . Maybe I've run into the advanced Wossnames and Thingies already, or maybe I've run into a hidden-bonues-fed "cheating" AI?
Or, do some normal NPRs already exist at a certain tech level, which may be ahead of or behind your own when the game begins? (or when you generate a new system. . . ?)
Is the AI a competent "player", with or without any bonuses it may or may not have?
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Unrelated question: How does one start a new game in a random, non-Sol system? Without having to construct the system themself? I want to start somewhere new and unfamiliar, but I don't want to have to use SM mode and probably gain loads of knowledge about the universe and NPRs along the way. . .