Spiral Galaxy: Anomaly?

[thelebk]

With Spuds awesome mods fixing the most glaring problems in the game I have started a new game in a spiral galaxy. In the default galaxy type there are good planets to be found and at least one decent planet one jump from the player's starting position. In my first spiral every single planet in my arm is crummy and I am locked in with the Klackon, oh joy. The only planet remotely worth colonizing is the Klackon homeworld. Is this the way planets distribute in spiral galaxies? Do the other arms have the normal great planets so the other races will absolutely steamroll me when I finally develop the tech to travel unstable warp lanes?

[frdnwsm]

Sounds like a bad seed roll. I have done 2 cluster games and two spiral; they all seemed to have a varied but reasonable planet selection.

And yes, the situation you describe sounds like a rocky road to travel, depending on game difficulty level. The Klackons will outproduce you, although being uncreative, they will likely fall behind you in tech. The resultant warfare will tax you; when you do break out, the other races may well have an edge on you.

Carry with this game on for a challenge, or start again and hope for a better seed from the RNG. Note that picking a cluster instead of a spiral guarantees you around 200 or more turns of solitude to develop your civilization.

[thelebk]

I chose Spiral so the tech to travel unstable wormholes would actually mean something. I figured that was a good board to play Psilon. I just defeated the Klackons but yes it taxed me. I am behind in colonies with the other races. I am taking this as a challenge and I really want to see if the other arms are just as crummy as that would be a crazy imbalance in starting positions. If I was playing harder than normal difficulty I would have restarted the game.

[frdnwsm]

OK, fair enough. But Spirals are also generally a bit harder than clusters, due to the early racial conflict that usually ensues. As I said, you probably got a bad seed, and the other spiral arms probably have better planet selections. Good luck!

Hmm, I wonder if the seed roll affects ALL systems equally. I am uncertain of this, now that I think about it. Maybe they ARE all equally inhospitable. I'd be interested in hearing what you find out. Also, did you tinker with the age of the galaxy? A young galaxy will have more mineral rich but hostile environment planets. Good for Silicoids, less good for organic types.

[thelebk]

I will invent the tech soon that lets me cross unstable wormholes and I have my scouts pre-positioned to see if I got screwed or the universe is just an inhospitable place. In my spiral arm for instance there is a space dragon guarding a *Gas Giant*. Yes, no other planets in that system, just a gas giant. Never seen that before. The only setting I tinkered with was turning off the turn based victory as it feels hollow to me. Will keep you updated!

[frdnwsm]

With the right technology, a gas giant can be turned into a barren planet. Why, in a galaxy full of toxic and radiated planets and asteroid belts, this would indeed be a treasure worth guarding!

[thelebk]

Lol, sad but true!

[Bergil]

With Spiral I've started off with Orion and a system with 5 good planets in. Just saying.

[Imricdaelf120741]

This sounds like one of two things happened:

1: You turned off balanced starting conditions
OR
2: This particular seed doesn't have balanced starting conditions *therefore* this should be reported as a minor bug.



Either way, this does like like a good challenge. I would try to out-tech the other races and try to expand into the weakest ones territory.

[thelebk]

It is proving a good challenge, and I am enjoying it. I developed tech to move down the unstable lanes last night and spied all but one of the other player's worlds. Every other race has much better worlds. I do find this odd as I did not toggle off balanced starting conditions... Is there a way to see the Map seed and share it here?

[frdnwsm]

You can see the map seed number when setting up the game; I don't know of any way to find it out after the game has started. Is there an option to go back to turn 0?

[thelebk]

Hmmm... Ill have to look when the game is over but I gut says no.

[Spud Dastardly]

Originally posted by thelebk:

Is there a way to see the Map seed and share it here?

You can see it on the load game screen.

[thelebk]

Thanks Spud. That said I started in the distinctly inferior SW cluster with the expansionist powerhouse Klackons as my unruly neighbor. Big Bang Seed is 7402 and I confirmed that Balanced Starting Conditions was ON. At least it was supposed to be!

[thelebk]

Ok I completed the game and accidentally won another economic victory. Tech Victory is now much more difficult with Spud's Mod which is for the better. I definitely got an extremely poor roll on starting position, but with the Psilon to research and the klackons to pop and farm most of planets the combination proved unbeatable on normal.