Lots of Mk III Planets

[Fleet]

Disregard all my omega devices and such, thats just for playing around.

I'm surprised by all the Mk III and IV planets around. Is this normal? (can be seen by the I Can See My House cheat)

[keith.lamothe]

Are you playing on a higher difficulty than you're used to for normal games?  That looks like Diff 10 III/IV density to me.

[Fleet]

By memory, it was 7.6/7.6 (plus, the AIP indicator at the top shows 10 AIP (I)

Dang, I hope I didn't just add to the steaming pile I have already left you guys

I attached a save for verification with the original post

[x4000]

That should never happen at random -- I wonder if it's related to the AI type?  The mark level of the plants is set from the start, and unrelated to AI Progress, so that many planets with a visual mark of that level should never happen except possibly when playing with technologists or something.

[Fleet]

The Technologists AI types should produce uniform III/IV planets, unlike what I found. Furthermore, I know I didn't pick a technologist since the top bar indicates that thei AI Mk level is at (I), rather than (III)

[x4000]

That's a good point.

[RedrumJackle]

O_O! HOLY *&*)

That is something crazy, have you even bothered playing through that map?

I wonder how that would turn out. Its like the AI hates you and wants revenge. XD

[keith.lamothe]

Hmm, the map does appear to be rather stuffed with IIIs and IVs, but in my own testing (with two starfleet commander AIs 7.6 and 7.3) this appears to be "normal"; it may be that "normal" has been buggily inflated lately, not sure.  Anyway, here are the results I got:

That seed, X map type:
1/33/57/28  (that's 1 Mark I planet, 33 Mark II planets, 57 Mark III, 28 Mark IV)

Same seed, simple map type:
4/24/59/32

Different seed (70312500), simple map type:
3/30/59/27

Different seed (70312500), X map type:
1/35/57/26

So they all look sane in comparison with one another.

Does it seem like all maps have more IIIs and IVs than they should?

[x4000]

Maybe it's just a really, REALLY unlucky seed.

[keith.lamothe]

In the distribution of the IIIs and IVs, or in their proportion?  The other random seed I tested had very similar results on the proportion.

[x4000]

In their proportion, but then again when you don't play with the reveal on it's always hard to tell.  I don't remember what the proportions are supposed to be, but from your counts it's like 70% III/IV planets, which does seem a tad high.  But it's hard to just say for sure, and certainly that code has not been touched to my knowledge.

You might try looking at some of the older saves that we use for benchmarking to see what their proportions are, and if those same seeds give the same proportions now.

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, just checked some saves of varying vintage:

3/24/63/29 (8/8 diff) (119 ai planets)

3/34/12/9 (7.3/7.3 diff) (58)

3/30/28/18 (7.6/7.6) (79)

2/17/37/23 (10/10) (79)


So it looks like higher-planet-count maps have much higher proportions of the IIIs and IVs, with 120 maps being particularly brutal on that.

To test the theory, here a few just generated maps with the same seed I used for my second set of results above (70312500) :

5/20/7/7 (39)

2/37/11/9 (59)

1/33/31/14 (79)

[x4000]

Ahh..... that would indeed do it.  I forgot about that, I hardly ever play over 80.  That sounds like it's doing what it should be, then!  Thanks so much for looking into that.