Hey,
So I set up a multi-NPR start in Sol system. I run Aurora on a SSD and also tried on a ramdisk, no difference in performance btw.
I had set up 8 nations in Sol, my player nation and 7 Human NPRs. For reference Terran Federation (me), Russia, China, USA, India, Arab League, Latin Alliance, Japanese Coprosperity and United Nations (non playing, for pop only). This is obviously heavily inspired by one of Steve's fiction, Solarian empires. All nations have a colony on Earth and most have 1-2 colonies on the Solar system, except UN which is there only to provide pop. There is a truce clock of 20 years. TF is supposed to be the spiritual child of European Union mixed with some Western World country.
Then I proceeded to run one day (backing up the DB each time). So far result has not been that great, time-wise:
TF and China: 3 secs
TF, China, USA: 10 secs
TF, China, USA, Russia: 23 secs
TF, China, USA, Russia, try two: 22 secs
RAMDisk - TF, China, USA, Russia: 21 secs
TF, China, USA, Russia, UN: 37 secs
TF, China, USA, Russia, India: 49 secs
TF, China, USA, Russia, India, Japan: 70 secs
Everyone: roughly ~~ 10 mn
My conclusion is that at best I can afford playing with 4 nations (TF, China, USA, Russia), as 23 seconds for a day is already quite much and I guess it will inflate to several minutes as game grows.
So, and that will be my question, how people like Steve manage to run 14 NPRs at once! Given the exponential time processing, running even a single day for 14 NPRs in the same system would take perhaps a full (real world) day to be processed!
I'm curious. As much as I would like to play with a more elaborate setting, where the various blocks of power from Earth expand in the Sol system and beyond, it seems that practically the setting is not viable.