Looking for advice on setting up a challenging game

[Dalamar42 (OP)]

As per the title I am looking for ways to setup a game that would feel challenging past the early game.

I have had a lot of fun dealing with Precursors and with the first NPR that I tend to come across, but after that I find that the game stagnates a bit.  I have never stumbled into any of the other spoiler races and other NPRs that generate when I explore a new system are generally too weak to be a challenge since they only have that one system and by that time I have a pretty well developed economy and navy.

What I tried most recently is to create a game with two starting NPRs that were reasonably far from me so by the time we met they would have had time to build up and I could have a multi-system empire vs multi-system empire type of conflict.

However, I now have to abandon this game because it takes so long to process a single turn that the game is unplayable.  I checked the DB and I can see there are 20 different races (both spoilers and NPRs) and almost 4500 known systems.  Mind you I have never seen any of this.  I know of 4 races total, including mine, and maybe a couple of dozen systems max.

I assume this was caused by NPRs exploring around like crazy.

So I have two questions.

If I do the same thing (create a game with starting NPRs), but prevent them from triggering generation of other NPRs or spoilers, would that achieve what I want, i. e.  a potentially large scale challenging game, without performance issues caused by massive NPR expansion?

Are there other game setups people use to create this sort of challenge? (aside from custom building everything with SM.  I don't think I have the patience for that)

[nuclearslurpee]

This may work at least partially. However, one of the core issues of the NPR AI is that they really are not skillful at handling multi-system empires as their economy, research, population growth, etc. will all become fairly stagnant compared to a dynamic player race. Adding to this, the NPR fleet templates are rather limited and constrained compared to what a well-developed player can field, notably NPRs will tend to stick with the same 200,000 or 300,000-ton fleet organization and send fleets into battle one at a time, while the player can easily mass a larger fleet at will. This limitation can really only be overcome by playing with multiple player races, which many players on this forum do regularly and have lots of fun with but does require much time and patience (and to some extent removes some of the surprise element, but once you've seen a few NPRs you've seen them all).

A couple of other smaller suggestions:

• Conventional Start is basically Aurora's hard mode as it gives the NPRs effectively a ~20-year head start technologically and in terms of shipbuilding.
• Adjust the difficulty setting at game start. The difficulty setting only applies to NPRs on initial race creation but gives them extra population, research, and build points proportionally to the setting. In very rough terms, an additional +100 difficulty would translate to about a 20-year head start.
• Reduce the player race research and production rates. This is actually probably a better solution than adjusting difficulty in many cases as the NPRs do not always react well to the extra population, and unlike the difficulty settings this is a differential which will exist for the entire game which can help counteract the limited ability of the AI to expand properly.

Additionally check out the house rules thread elsewhere on these forums as many players have used creative house rules to limit the player race for a more interesting game. One very common house rule is to forego the use of box launchers as the NPRs struggle to defend against the massive salvos these launchers can put out.

[Dalamar42 (OP)]

Thanks for the detailed response! I just started a new game and I will give those suggestions a try.

[Froggiest1982]

Additionally check out the house rules thread elsewhere on these forums as many players have used creative house rules to limit the player race for a more interesting game. One very common house rule is to forego the use of box launchers as the NPRs struggle to defend against the massive salvos these launchers can put out.

Here you go: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12697.0

[Jorgen_CAB]

In general a reduced research rate and conventional start will make NPR and the other "special" foes more potent for a much longer time.

Reduced survey will also slow down the way you can expand and also help in reducing the slowdown in NPR activating other NPR as well, depending on the values you give the game for that.

Role play in general can very much increase the difficulty rate quite significantly.

For example I always treat industry in a more realistic way so projects have to be set up for long term productivity which means you can't just switch between industrial project any way you want. Most colonies will also want to be as self sufficient as possible over time and will push the local political agenda in that direction, this obviously depend on your role-play theme.

Research can't be easily focused in one area as that is not how research work, so I have several role-play directive in how different research project are initiated and get research facilities handed to them. You also can't easily transfer facilities from one field to another... you can't just turn a large particle accelerator facility into a research facility for tank technology. Also... in the real world allot of technology is highly interrelated in so many ways that progress in one field will lead to progress in other fields indirectly, the game really don't model this at all... so role-play it instead.

A game such as Aurora you should not really care so much about the game mechanic as the story you are trying to tell for yourself. Aurora is meant to tell interesting stories and not to beat...

The next step is playing multiple factions and experience several stories at the same time, not everyone can manage the duality in several stories at the same time but if you do you can experience some epic struggles and challanges.

[Blogaugis]

Some folks also tend to be... overwhelmed by the Star Swarm.
I personally find the idea of organisms surviving and thriving out in space to be utter nonsense, but maybe not for You..?