Change Log for v7.00 Discussion

[Steve Walmsley]

if i set "NPR can create NPR" to zero, it will result in an empty universe since the AI will still explore but find nothing?

is it possible to set another creation chance once a human player enters a system (that does not contain a colony) for the first time (i guess this information is not tracked yet)? this chance could be the difference between human and NPR chance, to result in about the same chance (though the calculation is not correct from a statistical point of view) for creating NPRs, but only when it matters for me.

There are separate human player and NPR creation chances for new system generation. You can set either or both to zero. Once an NPR enters a system and there is no generation of an NPR, you cannot recalculate that once a human player enters. Until a system is generated, it doesn't exist and has no impact on the game. Suddenly creating a new NPR in a system that has been empty for several years could have a significant and unrealistic effect on the game.

[IanD]

Can the NPR difficulty mirror the human one please?
Ian

Edit How do you get NPRs to use the new tech they research?

Double Edit. Why do NPRs research compressed fuel storage system? They don't even use the stuff!

[Jorgen_CAB]

Whould it be possible to use a system for fleet training where the resting point for fleet training is like 80% for passive training. Above that you need to actively train the fleet and if it is not actively training it should start to fall back to around 80% depending in the same factors that you use for increasing it.

The reason being that fleet training should not be a permanent value and fleets should need active training or experience to stay in shape.

I believe a similar mechanic would work for ship experience too, which would make the basic training level of crew more important. Perhaps crew need to be replaced once in a while so a certain amount of crew is replaced on ships while they are stationed at a base with 10.000 or more population. Let's say you replace crew quicker the more of the ships Deployment time you have used up. The exact numbers of crew replaced when resting and/or fresh would be up to balancing. Experience on ships should perhaps increase quicker during fleet training and combat to balance the drop when you replace crew on the ships.

Both of these features are something I would really like to have from a realism point of view.

[Steve Walmsley]

Can the NPR difficulty mirror the human one please?
Ian

Edit How do you get NPRs to use the new tech they research?

Double Edit. Why do NPRs research compressed fuel storage system? They don't even use the stuff!

Not sure what you mean about difficulty.

There are trigger techs that cause the NPR to redesign one or more of their existing ships or missiles, etc.

Sounds like a bug. I need to exclude NPRs from researching ruin-only tech.

[Paul M]

One thing that would be good would be a turn over of crew both in ships and your pool.  As it stands now you get crew points adding up to the point where it is no longer an issue.  If you have a non-NT start you really get a lot of crew points as you have years before your fleet reaches a fairly good size.  It is like income, non-NT starts should have crew and income generation really reduced (10% of normal or something).

I'd suggest that 10% of your current pool is removed each year at that start of the year.  For further "realism" I would also suggest that once a year that 25% of the ships crew is exchanged with 60% of that number going back to the pool and 40% vanishing (retiring).  This will mean that ships crew grades won't always stay at maximum once achieved.

example:  Current Crewbeing Pool: 10,000 (start of year 1 000 is removed from pool) so it drops to 9 000.
example:  Ship has crew of 200.  Start of year 50 crew are removed from ship and replaced by 50 skill 0 crew.  20 of the high skilled crew are retired, and 30 are returned to the crewbeing pool.

[alex_brunius]

I'd suggest that 10% of your current pool is removed each year at that start of the year.  For further "realism" I would also suggest that once a year that 25% of the ships crew is exchanged with 60% of that number going back to the pool and 40% vanishing (retiring).  This will mean that ships crew grades won't always stay at maximum once achieved.

I love the idea, and it would add alot of realism.

I thought 10% sounded a bit high at first, but after running some calculations and comparing to real military re-enlistment rates it's quite generous due to only effecting undeployed crew basically on the waiting list, while real militaries like the US has similar amounts retiring every year. (approx 64% average re-enlist roughly every 4 year = 10.6% total retirement per year for everyone including those deployed ).

[IanD]

Not sure what you mean about difficulty.

Sorry I should have said the difficulty modifier (%) on the game details page. My experience in my current game suggests NPR discovered NPRs are either lower tech or equal, not higher. It can make for a long drawn-out NPR conflict.

[Steve Walmsley]

Sorry I should have said the difficulty modifier (%) on the game details page. My experience in my current game suggests NPR discovered NPRs are either lower tech or equal, not higher. It can make for a long drawn-out NPR conflict.

All NPR generation is based on the status of player races in the game, not the specific race that discovers the NPR.

[stonestriker]

I love the idea, and it would add alot of realism. 

I thought 10% sounded a bit high at first, but after running some calculations and comparing to real military re-enlistment rates it's quite generous due to only effecting undeployed crew basically on the waiting list, while real militaries like the US has similar amounts retiring every year.  (approx 64% average re-enlist roughly every 4 year = 10. 6% total retirement per year for everyone including those deployed ).

I think this is great idea, although we should be careful not to model it too closely to current (as in Earth) organization.  Think of of those poor auxiliaries of the Roman army that had to serve for a minimum of 25 years!

You can also picture a caste-based society where you will be a soldier for life, starting as an apprentice gunners assistant, working his way up to master gunner, and, once age start setting in, getting relegated to guarding the ships cleaning cupboard.

Or a feudal-type society where the CO of the ship bring his own crew from his estate and holdings.  The crew will be a mix of military professionals (pilots, marines, gunners) and former civilians (engineers, cooks, medical professionals)

[DuraniumCowboy]

Back to the NPR growth/game slow down issue, I had another thought.

For the invaders, I recommend setting it so if they do show up, they show up in a randomly determined system already surveyed by the player.  There is no use having a rampaging set of invaders if all they are doing is trashing NPR's that the player will never get to see.

[exdeathbr]

The  NPR generation difficult could be like this.
Imagine player generation value is 50% and NPR one is 10%

In this case when a NPR discover a new system the chance of a npr being generated is:
  [ (50* how close player is from the system) + (10* how close npr is from the system {well this will be 100%} ) / (how close player is to system + how close npr is to system) ]

[Whitecold]

The  NPR generation difficult could be like this.
Imagine player generation value is 50% and NPR one is 10%

In this case when a NPR discover a new system the chance of a npr being generated is:
  [ (50* how close player is from the system) + (10* how close npr is from the system {well this will be 100%} ) / (how close player is to system + how close npr is to system) ]

The JPs are not pregenerated, so you don't know in advance how far the player is away. You could be right behind the next JP you explore.

[NihilRex (OP)]

The JPs are not pregenerated, so you don't know in advance how far the player is away. You could be right behind the next JP you explore.

So, until the NPR and Players have a jump link, there are no NPR generated spoilers.  Sounds good.

[Erik L]

So, until the NPR and Players have a jump link, there are no NPR generated spoilers.  Sounds good.

Once the NPRs start exploring, they can spawn the spoilers.

[Vandermeer]

Very much liking the planned changes so far. The sorting of the task force stacks will save me a lot of time, because I liked putting them in order, and to date that was only possible by shoving around fleets and/or renaming them.
The changes to how NPR work in their anonymity also seem to be a great revolution that prevents the self-replicating slowdown, and then deals with silent battles in a way I always wished to be possible (accuracy is not important for me for invisible fights). I guess in my next game I will wait for 6.5 to test out how they fare with option 3 - limitless detection.

Now, if only there was some sort of control mechanic for the civils that so many people have asked about.