Ethnicity in humans.

[XelNigma]

This can quickly devolve int people calling each other racist. Lets try to avoid that and consider that everyone comes at this in good faith.

I have noticed in my Terran start that every character and NPC is of black ethnicity. For the people representing earth I found this lack of diversity strange.
I looked it up and it seems once upon a time it was not the case, that some update along the way not only changed the player character to black, but most of the npcs as well. Many consider it a bug.
Seeing as this was years ago. i'm surprised its not been fixed. But I assume someone has made a non-official patch. but none of the topics Iv read talk about such a thing.

Looking through the workshop i see plenty of mods for changing their cloths. but none about fixing this bug. Its also the only time iv seen white or asian character models.
So they are either using console commands to spawn in the model for the screen shot or they have the issue fixed.

[¥aeko]

They should all be split equally (afaik), at least according to the scripts. (but, yeah, I have seen that "piling up" too sometimes, its weird, as if it wasnt always equal.

If you dont like that, change the values or grab the mod that allows you to do so. (something with "sensible" in the workshop)

EDIT: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973524625

Note: this mod, by default, lowers the amount of women in the game, unless I missread the files - idk if that still applies. (but you can fix that again)

[Chaos]

You can try the custom start options. I always use it as I always disable the super-highways which makes the game infinitely better.

In those options you get to choose characters from a much larger selection.

[Gimbutz]

Originally posted by XelNigma:

This can quickly devolve int people calling each other racist. Lets try to avoid that and consider that everyone comes at this in good faith.

I have noticed in my Terran start that every character and NPC is of black ethnicity. For the people representing earth I found this lack of diversity strange.
I looked it up and it seems once upon a time it was not the case, that some update along the way not only changed the player character to black, but most of the npcs as well. Many consider it a bug.
Seeing as this was years ago. i'm surprised its not been fixed. But I assume someone has made a non-official patch. but none of the topics Iv read talk about such a thing.

Looking through the workshop i see plenty of mods for changing their cloths. but none about fixing this bug. Its also the only time iv seen white or asian character models.
So they are either using console commands to spawn in the model for the screen shot or they have the issue fixed.

As you said, let's keep to the facts. The distribution of human phenotypes is equal in the game files. No change was ever made to this, and no change was ever made to change a player character's skin colour. Allegations to the latter were based on cutscenes with extreme lighting, rather than on how the character looks normally.

However, as you also said. Bugs are always a possibility. If you want us to confirm whether your save is bugged, you have two options:
1) File a bug report in the official Technical Support forum (or Beta Feedback forum, if you're using the beta) on the Egosoft website. The Steam forums exist for players to talk among each other, the official forums are where you get the devs' ear. To link a save in your post, you're going to have to upload it to a file hosting service like Google Drive first. If you choose this option, it'll be easy for us to integrate the report into our system and get back to you with results.
2) You can instead take the shortcut and mail the save directly at [e-mail]. You probably won't get an answer this way, but we'll still check it out.

[Cythal]

I don't consider it a bug however if I may, I will explain my theory of what is happening. I stand corrected if wrong.

From back in the day when I looked at the game files, to give my character the white suit uniform from custom starts, there is a parameter that that determines these features and they are randomly assigned, for each generation of an NPC.

Now if you generate 1000 NPC Randomly in the whole Terran race, then plot a graph, say a bar chart of all the categories, within small statistical anomaly, you should have roughly equal Npc of each category. Lets say 500 male and 500 female, and withing each of those, say 100 White, 100 Black, 100 Asian, 100 Hispanic, or 100 of any other race.

Now, the player is not seeing all of this at the same time. He or she is only see what is in front of them. And once the NPC is generated, it cannot be regenerated, it remains female, or male, or white or black.

I think when you then see more of a particular race without seeing the whole, it is easy to think misrepresentation.

The way to test there is any unequal distribution, is to have a large sample. An Empire with thousands of ships all fully crewed, should have about 1000+. If you have time on your hands, then you will need to go into the crew menu, com all your crew. Then tally whether they are White, Black, Asian or Hispanic, even mixed race if you wish. When you then look at the numbers, if there is a huge difference then the random generator is weighted to that particular race with the huge number.

In my opinion, this is not something to worry about but I respect anyone's views as long as they are fair and just. To me I think just making my character as I want him to look is enough. I do not mind who works in my empire. Green Hair, red hair, Afro, white, black, you name it. The only requirement is that Managers, and Captains of large military ships are suited.

[XelNigma]

It could be a sample size issue. 100% possible and plausible.
I just ran into the mission commander lady and she was white. the first non-black person I had seen. And on top of that. the two npcs with her where also white women or asian women.
Prior to this my sample size was maybe 15 npcs. Maybe thoes stations where just ran by black people and this station seems to be ran by white women. maybe each station only has one type of human on it?

It just might be a case of random clumping.

[¥aeko]

Originally posted by XelNigma:

It just might be a case of random clumping.

I think its 30% chance per color? (guess gimbutz will correct me about it)
So, yeah, you can get unlucky to have 15 of X in a row.

[Narn]

I would not have such a problem with it if everyone did not have a fro all the time. I mean give some MoFos some dreads or something.

[Mowglia]

Originally posted by ¥aeko:

Originally posted by XelNigma:

It just might be a case of random clumping.

I think its 30% chance per color? (guess gimbutz will correct me about it)
So, yeah, you can get unlucky to have 15 of X in a row.

That's not "unlucky". Chance of that is 0.000001435% ...

That's "really rather unlucky", "highly unlikely", or as my dear old granny used to say; "cursed" :)

[¥aeko]

not when we also consider, that some NPCs (afaik) are hardcoded to be X or Y, like the karen reception agent (manager) on important stations?

At least I constantly see the same ones there?

[XelNigma]

Originally posted by Mowglia:

Originally posted by ¥aeko:

I think its 30% chance per color? (guess gimbutz will correct me about it)
So, yeah, you can get unlucky to have 15 of X in a row.

That's not "unlucky". Chance of that is 0.000001435% ...

That's "really rather unlucky", "highly unlikely", or as my dear old granny used to say; "cursed" :)

Funny you say that, we often contribute bs to the "family curse" tho we use our last name instead of family. Its multi generational as well.

[SY5]

Honey, Have you seen my Wallet?

[Doom]

Originally posted by XelNigma:

I have noticed in my Terran start that every character and NPC is of black ethnicity. For the people representing earth I found this lack of diversity strange.

Terran start character is always black, yes. You could pick wayward scion or young gun, or custom start if you want terran with specific skin.

Originally posted by XelNigma:

I looked it up and it seems once upon a time it was not the case, that

Once upon the time, the game had a lighting bug which caused black character appear white in certain conditions. The character was always black.

I was one of the people looked into it, and all the screaming from people yelling about racism back then did not help. It was a lighting bug and character was not white.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/392160/discussions/0/4407418033227228659/?tscn=1722636260#c4522262088834461886

Regarding distribution of races, the devs swear it is uniform.

[PeaceMaker]

Originally posted by XelNigma:

This can quickly devolve int people calling each other racist. Lets try to avoid that and consider that everyone comes at this in good faith.

I have noticed in my Terran start that every character and NPC is of black ethnicity. For the people representing earth I found this lack of diversity strange.
I looked it up and it seems once upon a time it was not the case, that some update along the way not only changed the player character to black, but most of the npcs as well. Many consider it a bug.
Seeing as this was years ago. i'm surprised its not been fixed. But I assume someone has made a non-official patch. but none of the topics Iv read talk about such a thing.

Looking through the workshop i see plenty of mods for changing their cloths. but none about fixing this bug. Its also the only time iv seen white or asian character models.
So they are either using console commands to spawn in the model for the screen shot or they have the issue fixed.

This was a big issue on release, and, as usual, we get stepped on for mentioning it. I think we will find out the truth of all this sooner than many think.

[Zloth]

Originally posted by XelNigma:

It just might be a case of random clumping.

Fifteen coin tosses of heads in a row is possible, but exceedingly unlikely. This is even less likely because it's more like a 1 in 3 chance. We would have to have something on the order of a million people use the Terran start to get even a small chance of seeing a report like this.

This has to happen at the start of your very first game, too. No "I happened to run into 15 humans of the same race after playing for 400 hours."

[XelNigma]

Originally posted by Zloth:

Originally posted by XelNigma:

It just might be a case of random clumping.

Fifteen coin tosses of heads in a row is possible, but exceedingly unlikely. This is even less likely because it's more like a 1 in 3 chance. We would have to have something on the order of a million people use the Terran start to get even a small chance of seeing a report like this.

This has to happen at the start of your very first game, too. No "I happened to run into 15 humans of the same race after playing for 400 hours."

Keep in mind some of thoes, like the player, the wingman, and some of the other story NPCs are always black. so its less then 15 coin flips. But its very odd when every person in the dock, at the trade store, manager and everyone just walking around is black it was odd.

But then later when I moved on to the station with mission command, who I assume is always a white woman, just about everyone there was a white female. I found 1 white guy on the landing dock. But at that point I was purposely running around to see if the entire station was female.

Also, why is there never anyone in security and engineering?