Is the player weighted to start towards the outside of the Galaxy?

[prismaticmarcus]

i'm 99% sure this isn't confirmation bias but it seems that this has been the case since 1.0.

say, if you draw a line from the edge of the galaxy to the centre (i.e. the innnermost stars) and call it 0-100...

i've always started in the 0-80 range and never (since 1.0) in the 80-100.

is this just RNGesus or is there something to this?

 

[InvisibleBison]

I've never noticed anything one way or the other about this, but just off the top of my head it doesn't seem too unlikely that a random placement would usually put the player in the outer portions of the galaxy. The 0-80 section of your range is going to have a lot more than 80% of the stars in the galaxy, due to how the geometry of the situation works out.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

The 0-80 section of your range is going to have a lot more than 80% of the stars in the galaxy

now i'm wondering whether FE's tend to be towards the inside for this sort of reason

 

[Ussnorway]

Have you picked Sol perhaps

 

[prismaticmarcus]

Have you picked Sol perhaps

you know what? that probably applies to about a quarter of my games, but less and less the more i play. but that doesn't change my mind or question. it still feels to me like i'm more on the outside than the inside.

 

[SaintD]

It's completely normal and expected due to the distribution of stars in a circle. The inner edge requires few stars to fill its area, with more and more needed as the diameter increases. How many stars do you need in order to line the inner edge of the galaxy, as opposed to the outer edge?

Since most of the stars are required in the outer areas of the galaxy, that's where you'll statistically end up being most of the time in a random draw.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

It's completely normal and expected due to the distribution of stars in a circle. The inner edge requires few stars to fill its area, with more and more needed as the diameter increases. How many stars do you need in order to line the inner edge of the galaxy, as opposed to the outer edge?

Since most of the stars are required in the outer areas of the galaxy, that's where you'll statistically end up being most of the time in a random draw.

yeah, i'll go with that. thanks all! are there any geometry nerds out there? feel free to keep going...

 

[SaintD]

Addendum:

When you spawn in a system outside the diameter of the galaxy and connected by an unreasonably long hyperlane, however, that's an insult and there needs to be some sort of digital choke chain that can be used to make the game suffer for it.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

Addendum:

When you spawn in a system outside the diameter of the galaxy and connected by an unreasonably long hyperlane, however, that's an insult and there needs to be some sort of digital choke chain that can be used to make the game suffer for it.

omg that's hilarious. starting at the dead end of a spiral is never boring.

 

[Quinzal]

90% of my empires spawn either hugging the galactic core, or on a fringe constellation hanging halfway outside of the galaxy. After a certain point you start to wonder why it doesn't just start you in the L-Cluster.

 

[kwheeler]

you know what? that probably applies to about a quarter of my games, but less and less the more i play. but that doesn't change my mind or question. it still feels to me like i'm more on the outside than the inside.

I have the opposite reaction. I like to stay near the edge of the galaxy, but it feels to me like I get shunted toward the inner core about three out of four games. (I often reset and restart until I can get a location in my preferred part of the galaxy). It must be observational bias on my end?

 

[Ryika]

From a technical perspective, there is a galaxy radius:

radius = 450

And spawns are added in circular clusters that have a fixed size:

cluster_radius = 150

And those clusters are spawned at a set distance from the galactic core:

cluster_distance_from_core = 300

It used to be possible to see these these clusters via the console command:

tweakergui draw.clusters

...but that command does no longer seem to exist in the current version of the game - and closing tweakergui windows crashes the game.

However, when it did exist, one could look at the method by which empires were spawned, and players weren't treated any differently from AI empires. They just got a random spot within the cluster, and were seemingly just treated like any another empire. So with clustered spawns at least, I don't think there is much room for a spawn bias that only affects the player. Of course this isn't "conclusive evidence", but in combination with the fact that other explanations so readily available, I find it unlikely that an actual spawn bias exists.

 

[malakhglitch]

I use a modified Milky Way Style Galaxy Gen mod in my games so the stars are more clustered coreward. I actually tend to spawn in the middle rim area.

 

[Empire of Terra Nova]

i think it also depends on your build

It's completely normal and expected due to the distribution of stars in a circle. The inner edge requires few stars to fill its area, with more and more needed as the diameter increases. How many stars do you need in order to line the inner edge of the galaxy, as opposed to the outer edge?

their density decreases from inner to the outer edge, though



personally i feel that there are factors influencing where you spawn (far away from other empires surrounded by leviathans, fe, and with systems very rich on resources... or very close to other empires and almost no resources at all), but i don't know why exactly and if things such as civics or traits have anything to do with it

most of the time i spawn somewhere in the middle of the galaxy, but i also had starting points on the very edge of the galaxy and also right next to the black hole. it's quite rare, though