Use Random Seed Setting

[walkes3]

Does anyone know what "Use Random Seed" does? I assume it randomizes events but since a lot of the game is RNG based, I'm curious what this actually changes. Thanks!

[Mistfox]

It randomizes results roll. What happens is that when you have a percentage roll, the game does not really go roll a 100 sided dice inside your computer. What it really does is to match the "roll" to an already pregenerated list of numbers in the game. So even if you reloaded, if you did everything the same (and the computer did as well), you will get exactly the same results every time. Random Seed setting regenerates a new "numbers" list so that the results can be different.

[Zuul]

Actually...unless they changed the way it worked, it's somewhat pointless.

Back in yesteryear (fire up my grandpa voice here), the game generated the seed when the game was booted, and ONLY when the game was booted. Even without the randomized seed, you could reload until you were blue in the face and you'd keep getting new outcomes because the seed only reset (and was stored separately from the save) when you completely closed the game back to desktop.

Originally it was added because the seed was actually fixed when you fired up the game. Wouldn't matter how many times, every time you closed to desktop and relaunched the game, the seed would be the same (with predictable outcomes for the starting councilors). However, as the seed didn't reset you could just close to menu and fire up another game to get new starting councilors.

Hence the option, so you could have a fresh seed on boot instead of the same thing every time.

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by Zuul:

Actually...unless they changed the way it worked, it's somewhat pointless.

Back in yesteryear (fire up my grandpa voice here), the game generated the seed when the game was booted, and ONLY when the game was booted. Even without the randomized seed, you could reload until you were blue in the face and you'd keep getting new outcomes because the seed only reset (and was stored separately from the save) when you completely closed the game back to desktop.

Originally it was added because the seed was actually fixed when you fired up the game. Wouldn't matter how many times, every time you closed to desktop and relaunched the game, the seed would be the same (with predictable outcomes for the starting councilors). However, as the seed didn't reset you could just close to menu and fire up another game to get new starting councilors.

Hence the option, so you could have a fresh seed on boot instead of the same thing every time.

... so in short, it's not working. lol.

[MyUrp1]

So I started a new game, played for a bit, discovered that the counselors available to recruit sucked, and decided to try a new game.

And got the same exact counselors.

I then selected the "random seed" option, started a new game, and now I have new counselors. Yay!

My guess is that the game uses the date or some other relatively stable value as the seed unless this option is selected, because my first and second games did not have the same counselors, only my second and third where I started the third game within an hour or two of the second. Randomizing fixes this. (Why it would need to be fixed is a bit of a mystery)