Could use some help understanding how the character system works

[Shark7]

What the title says.

Basically how is the best way to set up defined characters.

1. Does setting multiple characters per arrival level result in you getting all of them or just a random one from the group?

2. How to speed up arrivals (besides setting the rate in the race.txt file)? (IE is there an event that helps increase character arrival rates).

3. Why are certain types so much less likely to appear, even when the rate is set to max in the race.txt file. (IE what is determining which characters appear?)

[Haree78]

1) From memory: They will arrive randomly from the same group. I think there was a problem at one point with them being from the same group but this may have got fixed during the time I was creating the BSG mod. It's easy to test, do some intelligence agents all at the 1 level and see what order they come or if there are problems. Make an agent at the 2 level of appearance order just for test purposes.
2) A couple of race event types affect things apart from that it is the race files that define the rate with a huge amount of random.
3) I believe there are limits on how many you can have at a time, probably affected by Empire size, also there is a massive amount of random.

[ehsumrell1]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

What the title says.

Basically how is the best way to set up defined characters.

1. Does setting multiple characters per arrival level result in you getting all of them or just a random one from the group?

2. How to speed up arrivals (besides setting the rate in the race.txt file)? (IE is there an event that helps increase character arrival rates).

3. Why are certain types so much less likely to appear, even when the rate is set to max in the race.txt file. (IE what is determining which characters appear?)

I'll try to be helpful here with as much fact as I can. Some of this information is from my testing notes
so I hope to be clear.
Events and actions during the game may generate new characters. Faction-specific and government type-specific rules may influence the likelihood of characters of a particular type being generated.
The maximum number of characters available to the player is limited by the total population, similar to research. While the exact age of a character is not tracked, the time of service is tracked. Most characters will not serve indefinitely. Characters that are not lost to combat or other events may retire or pass away due to old age during the game. Characters may also be lost due to invasions, planetary bombardment, ship destruction, space travel mishaps, assassination, natural disasters, etc.

So to jointly touch on answers to your questions above I submit this:
The appearance order settings in the characters files are not iron-clad rules. They work per character role, so that if you define Scientist A with an appearance order of 5 and Scientist B with an appearance order of 9, then Scientist A will appear first. But in the meantime you might have Admiral A with an appearance order of 3, and he has not appeared yet, because there have been no events that would trigger a new admiral. The only exception to this are all characters with an appearance order of 0 (zero). These characters are present at game start.

Events that can speed arrivals of characters are Ground Battles and large troop recruitment's for Generals; New Fleet creations and Fleet space battles for Admirals; New Colony establishments for
Governors. Concerning Leaders, governments with elected leaders (Democracy, Mercantile Guild, Republic, Utopian Paradise, Way of the Ancients) have a small chance each year to generate a new leader that replaces the current leader in an election. More advanced leaders have a smaller chance of being replaced. The happiness and income of the faction also affects the chance of a new leader, so a less happy, war-weary populace with negative income is far more likely to lead to a change of government. For Mercantile Guild, income is the most important influence on the probability of a new Leader being elected, for Utopian Paradise, happiness is the main influence.
Remember though, that the number of generated characters (those not manually assigned at the start in
the character file by setting their appearance code to 'zero') is still hard-coded by the Empire Population amount. The rest of character info can be gleaned from the Legends Modding Guide.
Sorry for the length of this, but hope it helps Shark! [:)]

[Shark7]

OK, so I've not made any errors in my character file then, its just the fact that I start with a 1 planet empire and the population isn't yet sufficient for new characters.

And games as long as I play will probably eventually go through my entire list of characters, since I play purely sandbox mode.

[thebigpieman]

I have a question as well, so I decided to add a character to a race in the Human Revolutions mod by Antiscamp, however in doing so it causes the game to entire an infinite loop of creating a galaxy, am I missing something or am I just an idiot?

[dostillevi]

Without seeing the changes you made to the file its hard to say.. but be aware that the game requires very careful punctuation and minor mistypes can cause galaxy creation hanging and unplayable games. Its likely you made such a mistake and the game isn't able to load the race you modified because of the error, causing the galaxy to hang in an infinite loop.

[thebigpieman]

I attached a copy of the unmodified and the modified text in a zip file below.

[feelotraveller]

Dane Phillips is missing a comma after the fourth skill (final 0 in the middle).

[thebigpieman]

Damn how did I over look that?! Thanks for the help it's been rectified and things are working again.