Starting position bonus?

[ColdSteel]

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]

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

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Harkonis HellRazor

[Harkonis]

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

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Harkonis HellRazor

[ColdSteel]

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?

[Emperor Zodd]

Have you tried my quadrant mods?

[ColdSteel]

E.Z., No I haven't tried any mods because I'm waiting for the mod manager in the next patch release first. I'm sure your quadrants don't have the problem we're talking about here. Just hoping MM can patch this up some in the "official" default code and files where they randomsly generate the quadrants. I've been following your Posts in the mod section with some interest and I do plan to try them out after the 1.20 release. Thanks.

[Emperor Zodd]

My Mod wont change the original quadrants.
It will give you four extra ones to choose from.