RNG and seeded probability ideas

[Prophet]

I thought it might be a good mod idea to have a method of forcing certain stations to appear more often. A method of setting a 'seed' value that will correspond with a set of stations and encounters.

Example

Seed 1
+armor dealers
+black market stations
+anarchists
-weapon dealers
-hotels, enclaves

Seed 2
+tinkers
+ice farms
+urak warlords
-marauders
-fuel depots

etc...

This could create 'themed' universes where a particular style of play is more easily followed than another.

I'm not sure HOW to accomplish this, besides brute force removing unwanted stations and spawning new ones when the system is created but I may consider attempting this if there's much interest.

[SparcMan]

I believe George once mentioned that there is a random value (destiny or something like that) that is only rolled once per new game. Maybe that could be used to implement what you're suggesting.

[Prophet]

I talked with alterecco on IRC and I think I have an idea on how this could be accomplished.

A single-use item, given to the player at game start could open a screen to select the desired seed.

Basically, when each system is created I will hijack all the stations, check what seed was selected, remove stations that don't fit and replace them with preferred stations.

The core of it won't be too difficult but there will be some stations that will not be touched to avoid possible bugs (Korolov mostly and any static stations in the unique systems)

As for the themes:
-merchant game (most friendly stations will be trade routes)
-black market (BM stations)
-gauntlet (very few friendly stations)
-pacifist (very few enemies)
-military (fortresses, CSCs etc)
-varied (try to limit one station/type per system)
-grouped (stations appear in clusters rather than alone)

[Blitz]

Hmm... that sounds very very fun