Starting position bonus?

Sinapus · #1 January 21st, 2001, 07:43 AM

I've been noticing that whenever I start in a system with a huge habitable world (usually) and some other planets with my empire's atmosphere I seem to be closer to other empires.

Is this some sort of feature sort of like in the Civilization games where you'd end up with bonus advances and maybe another settler if you were close to other civs?

------------------
--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough
to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a
pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors
come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless
eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your
associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

Jubala · #2 January 21st, 2001, 08:06 AM

I have no idea. I didn't even know about the civ bonus thing and I have played civ alot and always thanked my lucky star when I got two settlers.

Sinapus · #3 January 21st, 2001, 08:18 AM

Two settlers wasn't so bad. Two settlers and four or five advances was usually a sign that you were screwed.

Atrocities · #4 January 21st, 2001, 08:57 AM

To be honest, I had not noticed this. What I did notice is that I seldom star with more than one habitable world in my starting system. That kinda bites as my system is usally surrounded by black holes and nebula.

Derek · #5 January 21st, 2001, 09:25 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Atrocities:
To be honest, I had not noticed this. What I did notice is that I seldom star with more than one habitable world in my starting system. That kinda bites as my system is usally surrounded by black holes and nebula.

Are you playing in an Ancient Galaxy? Otherwise, there shouldn't be all that many nebulae and black holes.

Derek

Derek · #6 January 21st, 2001, 09:30 AM

By the way, thanks for posting my mods on your SE4 site. One small request: next time you do so, shoot me an email letting me know you did. I'm not looking to deny you permission or anything; the more the merrier, I say. I just like to know where they are at, is all.

Derek

ColdSteel · #7 January 21st, 2001, 04:52 PM

I'm NOT playing in an ancient galaxy and I have black hole systems all over the place. Nebula systems too. I think something is not right with the way black holes and nebula systems are generated and I think I know what it is.

In my current game my whole empire's (galactic) south flank is guarded by entire chains of black whole systems. I just used the default setting for large galaxy. I've seen other Posts on this topic too. This can ruin a game. I've been at war for 50 turns had my enemy can't even get to me.

What I think is happening is that this is an artifact of a random number generator function. None of those are truly random and what I think we are seeing is a "clumping" effect where a large portion of the galaxy may not have any of these systems at all and yet one section of it has nothing BUT these systems. This effect can be more pronounced in small galaxies (all or none distributions) or large ones where the sample is large enough for the algorithm to show the clustering effect.

My suggestions to correct this problem are:

1) Make black hole and nebula systems uniformly distributed as a given small percentage of the galaxy's systems and not just a random distribution.

2) Or, model it after real galaxies where dark matter is more concentrated in the center of the galaxy. There you would expect to see more black holes so maybe pattern the distribution from the edge in so that there are very few to none on the edges and more in the center.

3) At the very least, use a better random number algorithm that has a more uniform distribution.

I think option 2 also has the added benefit of preventing empires being trapped in corners on startup by these systems. If they're concentrated more in the middle, there should be a better chance of other warp points to move around them.

The bottom line is that I think the distribution of these systems should be somewhat random in the game, but not completely random as it now appears that it is.

Harkonis · #8 January 21st, 2001, 07:31 PM

Number 2 probably wouldn't make sense since these are quadrants and not entire galaxies we're playing in.

------------------
Harkonis HellRazor

Harkonis · #9 January 21st, 2001, 07:31 PM

Number 2 probably wouldn't make sense since these are quadrants and not entire galaxies we're playing in.

------------------
Harkonis HellRazor

ColdSteel · #10 January 21st, 2001, 07:58 PM

That's very true. But in no game anywhere will you be playing in anything that really has enough systems to represent the massive size of a galaxy. I just suggested it as a mechanism that would maybe improve the gameplay and resolve the current problem. maybe a low even distribution is the way to go?

Comments?