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How Long Should NPCs Live?

Infinitely long (unless killed) -- NPCs are all adults and never age.
Total votes: 61 (60%)
As long as real-world humans -- NPCs age at the same rate that you do.
Total votes: 15 (15%)
1 year of play -- NPCs live a long time, but will eventually die of old age.
Total votes: 11 (11%)
1 month of play -- NPCs are born, take a week to mature, and get three weeks of activity.
Total votes: 10 (10%)
1 week of play -- NPCs grow for one day, then expire several real-time days later.
Total votes: 5 (5%)
1 hour of play -- NPCs are born and die at an evolutionary visible rate.
(No votes)
Total votes: 102
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Re: How Long Should NPCs Live?

#31
As I have previously said, I am VERY much in favor of death by old age, for the plain and simple reason that the continued transfers of power and wealth into new hands which may be more or less capable, have more or less connections, and have different friends and enemies, is absolutely essential if you want to understand human history.

Imagine if you will that Augustus Caesar and his generation was immortal, the Roman Empire may still be around. Nero, Calligula, Trajan, Heliogabalus, Constantine, Diocletian, Romulus Augustulus, may have been born, but under the great hands of Augustus, they would have never been in charge, and their contributions to the Empire, for good or ill would have never happened. Rome would have generally become locked into stalemates with the Germans and Persians, as the good natural leaders on all sides would have risen to the top and stayed there for eons. With default immortality, Poor quality players would be outdone, and overwhelmed, subjugated to the power of their betters, but good leaders would reign until their luck just happened to run out on some occasion. Even then, their replacement may still be a quite effective leader.

It should at the very least be an option
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Post

Re: How Long Should NPCs Live?

#32
Talvieno wrote:if the procedurally generated history is supposed to span a decent number of years, similar to Dwarf Fortress - say, anywhere from a hundred to a thousand years - then NPCs should die during worldgen, simply to make simulation more interesting with overturning of power and whatever.
That's an interesting compromise. Nicely done!

I'm still interested in the possibilities here, though. (In fact, maybe more so now that a number of people have weighed in on the question.)

To get a better idea of where people are coming from on this, let me ask a couple of questions (for enlightenment, not argument, although I freely admit to having an opinion on the subject):

1. For you players who expect to play a single game of Limit Theory for hundreds of hours or more: will that universe feel "alive" enough for you if the NPCs never change? Or is turnover in NPCs, including faction management and assets, not really a factor in why you expect to play one game of LT for a long time?

2. Some respondents to this poll seem to actively prefer that non-player characters never expire, and always stay the same. I'm curious: why?

Is it an "I personally am not interested in this feature so I don't want Josh to spend any time coding it for anyone" kind of thing? Or is there some positive gameplay benefit to preventing NPCs from ever dying -- other than killing them in their ships by the bushels -- that will help make playing LT more enjoyable for many of its players?
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Re: How Long Should NPCs Live?

#33
Flatfingers wrote:
Talvieno wrote:2. Some respondents to this poll seem to actively prefer that non-player characters never expire, and always stay the same. I'm curious: why?
I didn't consider "the overturning of power and empires" of history argument. Even though that transfer can happen without generations, I guess that put me in the "I don't want Josh to code it" camp and didn't think it was necessary. But, maybe it is. Sounds good to me if the game includes it. Now that I think about it, I did play a game where marriages made a difference in forming alliances. Hmm.
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Re: How Long Should NPCs Live?

#35
An interesting proposition.

I've always dealt with NPCs that were ageless, telling me what to do in the same tone/manner on multiple iterations of different characters (regardless of the game in question).

So, in such a fashion, I err towards let the NPCs live, and let them live long.

However, as Flat so correctly surmises, (and how I mentioned in a previous thread), having the change of power could be a real game-changer for those of us who plan on running LT in vanilla (and hopefully headless) for many weeks at a time.

I would like to have my group of AI running around and mining, and being profitable - therefore allowing me to explore.
So, in this scenario, I wouldn't be required to manage the mining ops.

Note: Headless mode is where there is no graphical viewpoint, but allows the computer to compute the AI alone, and therefore, time can advance quicker depending on system resources.
YAY PYTHON \o/

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Post

Re: How Long Should NPCs Live?

#36
Flatfingers wrote:
Talvieno wrote:if the procedurally generated history is supposed to span a decent number of years, similar to Dwarf Fortress - say, anywhere from a hundred to a thousand years - then NPCs should die during worldgen, simply to make simulation more interesting with overturning of power and whatever.
That's an interesting compromise. Nicely done!

I'm still interested in the possibilities here, though. (In fact, maybe more so now that a number of people have weighed in on the question.)

To get a better idea of where people are coming from on this, let me ask a couple of questions (for enlightenment, not argument, although I freely admit to having an opinion on the subject):

1. For you players who expect to play a single game of Limit Theory for hundreds of hours or more: will that universe feel "alive" enough for you if the NPCs never change? Or is turnover in NPCs, including faction management and assets, not really a factor in why you expect to play one game of LT for a long time?

2. Some respondents to this poll seem to actively prefer that non-player characters never expire, and always stay the same. I'm curious: why?

Is it an "I personally am not interested in this feature so I don't want Josh to spend any time coding it for anyone" kind of thing? Or is there some positive gameplay benefit to preventing NPCs from ever dying -- other than killing them in their ships by the bushels -- that will help make playing LT more enjoyable for many of its players?
I can't answer for question number 1 but I can tell you why I was someone who voted for NPCs having infinite life span. Besides what happens when the universe is generated I believe NPCs should not die of age because that could turn into a issue for the late game. Consider owning ships that NPCs are using. After so much time you'd have the NPCs retire and you'd have to train up NPCs without battle experience. Even if this happened once every couple of hours it would take away from some parts of the game. If it were coded it I'd probably rim out that section of LTSL and play with NPCs at a certain XP level.
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Post

Re: How Long Should NPCs Live?

#37
BFett wrote: I can't answer for question number 1 but I can tell you why I was someone who voted for NPCs having infinite life span. Besides what happens when the universe is generated I believe NPCs should not die of age because that could turn into a issue for the late game. Consider owning ships that NPCs are using. After so much time you'd have the NPCs retire and you'd have to train up NPCs without battle experience. Even if this happened once every couple of hours it would take away from some parts of the game. If it were coded it I'd probably rim out that section of LTSL and play with NPCs at a certain XP level.
In late game its not that much of an issue i think.
As you can just have regular turnover and training programs that you dont have to micro anymore.

You'd probably get a distribution like in real life, some rookies, lots of reasonably skilled/trained ones and a few geriatrics you have to think about replacement for.


In the early/early-mid game it would probably be more of a problem, as you dont have turnover and training programs running for replacements, and so your fleet could shrink steadily because you cant afford replacement crew
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Re: How Long Should NPCs Live?

#38
I like the idea of NPC's dying off etc, except for one thing. The game will probably be at a somewhat accelerated rate, meaning I doubt it will be a one to one ratio between game time and real time. So unless they have long lifespans, it would be rather tedious to have your guys dying off every couple hours in real time, although I guess it would depend on the actual ratio.
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Re: How Long Should NPCs Live?

#39
BFett wrote:Consider owning ships that NPCs are using. After so much time you'd have the NPCs retire and you'd have to train up NPCs without battle experience. Even if this happened once every couple of hours it would take away from some parts of the game.
Not to argue, but just as another perspective on this: Firstly, if losing an NPC commander due to retirement seems like a problem, what are you going to do when you lose an entire ship (and all its crew) in battle?

Secondly, let's assume you're running a factional organization consisting of a fleet of ships, in which most ships are large enough to have a commander and subordinate crew NPCs. In this case, I think the odds will be pretty good that there'll always be an NPC officer who's ready to be promoted to the big chair when an NPC skipper is ready to retire.

Speaking of which, you could always set a rule that NPCs (of whatever rank) only retire when their ship docks at a planet or space station. Once their resignation is accepted, the empty role slot gets filled through promotion, the retiring NPC gets his pension, and he makes his own way back to his homeworld where he spends the last of his money on a wild party. Then he vanishes, leaving behind only historical markers.

Finally, to the objection that a player managing a large fleet would have to spend all his time doing crew management: there's no reason why NPCs who manage multiple NPCs themselves can't handle promotions themselves. Just apply a simple fitness function to the second-level tier of subordinates. Certainly this is one extra piece of programming that would have to be added to NPC code, but my point is not that NPC replacement due to retirement could be done with zero coding -- it's that there's nothing conceptually or practically insurmountable about NPCs having less than infinite lifespans.
Poet1960 wrote:I like the idea of NPC's dying off etc, except for one thing. The game will probably be at a somewhat accelerated rate, meaning I doubt it will be a one to one ratio between game time and real time. So unless they have long lifespans, it would be rather tedious to have your guys dying off every couple hours in real time, although I guess it would depend on the actual ratio.
You'll notice that no one has voted for the "one hour of game time" option for NPC lifespans. ;)

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