Does the Habitable Planet slider work correctly?

[Peace Weaver]

I wasn't sure if I should report this as a bug or not, as there might be something about it I'm missing or not understanding.

After starting a game at 0.25x habitable planets and find 6 planets within 3 jumps from my home, I decided to test out the difference between the settings. By looking at the planets required to achieve domination victory, it's very easy to see at the outset of a game how many habitable planets are in the galaxy by extrapolating the total based on how many you need for victory.

0.25x = 207 planets
0.50x = 212 planets
0.75x = 225 planets
1.00x = 255 planets
...
2.00x = 317 planets

Granted, there is probably some randomness at play, and also probably some base line of planets for fallen empires and such, but the difference between the settings is not nearly as great as I expected. With only a 5 planet difference between some of the settings, I imagine on smaller galaxies you might not even get any difference at all.

Here are the game settings I'm using:
Huge
Elliptical
18 AI empires
6 advanced
5 fallen
3 mauraders
1x tradition
__ Habitible planets
1x primitives
1.5x crisis
2300 midgame
2400 endgame
Commodore
Normal Agressive
random placement
advanced neighbours on
1x hyperlanes
1x gateways
1x wormholes
ironman

 

[RandomZach]

The slider only controls planets that are randomly generated. It has no impact on pre-scripted planets and doesn't account for them. A lot of planets are pre-scripted. Breaking down your settings:

• 19 Normal Empires (you + 18 AI) - This should add 57 pre-scripted habitable planets
• Primitives - Each of these adds 1 pre-scripted planet. Their usage is random with low weighting, iirc it's ~1% of systems but probably best not to quote me on that.
• Fallen Empires:
  • Machine - 3 habitable planets in home system
  • Spiritualist - 2 planets in home system, 4 colonies, 4 holy worlds
  • Materialist - 1 planet in home system, 1 archive planet, 4 colonies
  • Xenophile - 3 planets in home system, 1 preserve planet, 4 colonies
  • Xenophobe - 2 planets in home system, 4 colonies
• Huge:
  • Trappist - 100% chance of 3 planets
  • Sanctuary - 20% chance of 4 planets
  • Zanaam - 30% chance of 1 planet

In addition, there are a number of systems that are pre-scripted NOT to have habitable planets (eg, black holes, neutron stars, some hostile systems) which further restricts the range of habitable planets. Also in every case where multiple systems are generated, the process can fail under some rare circumstances and generate fewer planets than expected.

Add it all up, and with your settings there's probably at least 100 pre-scripted planets in the galaxy which shifts the numbers considerably.

Finally, afaik, the slider simply modifies the usage odds of each habitable planet type. If my understanding is correct, then usage odds are calculated based on the sum of all usage odds of anything that can possibly spawn. This means that a multiplier of X on usage odds would not actually translate into X more of that thing spawning since the modifier also changes the sum of usage odds.

For example, say you had a simple setup with only 2 usage odds in it, A at 6 and B at 2. In this setup you'd expect 25% ( 2 / ( 6 + 2 ) ) of the things you create to end up as B. If you apply a 5x multiplier to B, though, you wouldn't expect 125% of the the things you get to be B, instead you'd expect 62.5% of your things to be B ( 2 * 5 / ( 6 + 2 * 5) )

 

[Peace Weaver]

Add it all up, and with your settings there's probably at least 100 pre-scripted planets in the galaxy which shifts the numbers considerably.

Yeah, what surprised me though was that 200 seems to be the baseline on the settings I was playing with. The difference from 0.25x to 1x to 2x seems to suggest that the normal amount of randomized planets in that galaxy is roughly 50, and if you could set the slider to 0 you'd still have about 200 'stock' planets. I suppose the difference between 7 extra and 50 extra is pretty signifigant, all things considered.... but the slider doesn't have as much impact as I would've thought it did. starting a game at 0.25x habitable planets felt like it would be a drastic change, with a galaxy bereft of habitable planets... but that's not the case at all.

I wonder how it scales on different galaxy sizes and settings, does it add an extra 50 planets to a tiny galaxy aswell? That would be dramatic.

 

[Almond_Brown]

It may also take into account your Empires Habitability setting? There may be as many Planets, and as many Habitable ones, but less that your Species can actually Colonize without penalty...

 

[urogard]

It may also take into account your Empires Habitability setting? There may be as many Planets, and as many Habitable ones, but less that your Species can actually Colonize without penalty...

Victory conditions don't care about your habitability.

 

[Defiler99]

Only semi-related; where does one see the progress bar toward Domination victory these days?
I remember it being on the F1 screen as a tab in v1.x, but it's eluding me on recent versions.
From the OP, it sounds like it's still there.

 

[Peace Weaver]

Only semi-related; where does one see the progress bar toward Domination victory these days?
I remember it being on the F1 screen as a tab in v1.x, but it's eluding me on recent versions.
From the OP, it sounds like it's still there.

There is a tab in the missions window for victory progress. It's not at all easy to find.

 

[RandomZach]

I wonder how it scales on different galaxy sizes and settings, does it add an extra 50 planets to a tiny galaxy aswell? That would be dramatic.

The number of planets per empire (fallen, primitive, or regular) is static regardless of galaxy size/habitability settings. What changes as you get smaller galaxies is that you can't have as many empires. Tiny only allows a maximum 7 regular empires (including the player), 1 fallen empire, and only produces a small number primitives. This should produce, very roughly, 25-35 extra planets instead of the 100+ you experienced with those settings on Huge.

 

[Peace Weaver]

Yes, but for the record it's not producing 100+ planets on huge untill you crank it up to 2x

Out of curiosity I tested it on tiny galaxies with the default empire settings, and it seems to be random enough that it does not actually guarantee a smaller amount of planets as you reduce the slider:

0.25x = 47
0.50x = 37
0.75x = 45
1.00x = 52
...
2.00x = 57

In this case it feels like the baseline is probably around 35, with the random planets being an extra 15 or so.

With even the smallest setting producing results where there is 1 habitable planet for every 4 stars in the galaxy, I feel like some tweaking of this feature is in order for people who want to play in galaxies where habitable planets are actually scarce, as the effects of the slider are quite subtle.

 

[RandomZach]

There is no baseline for the planets that aren't pre-scripted. It's just random and the multiplier changes the weighting. If you want to see the effects of just the slider, you need to run repeated iterations with all other empires off (including primitives and fallen empires). Even then you'll still need to check for things like sanctuary, trappist, etc and also realize that your own empire will add 3 planets to the total count.

I do agree with you, though, the effect of the slider is subtle and can be misleading. The hyperlane slider has the opposite problem.