Welcome back to part 12 in the Feature Series. This week we are going to talk about random events in Lord of Rigel and what plays can and shouldn't expect to see as they play through a game. Lord of Rigel will offer a diverse set of random events that can reward or hurt that player depending on what it is.
One thing that we have been very careful about with Lord of Rigel is to make sure that random events don't cripple players in early game. Some current 4x games focus so heavily on random events that the player is constantly fighting against the effects of these random events instead of focusing on the core game and their own goals and aspirations. Certainly players can expect Lord of Rigel to have some tough random events such as comets colliding with planets, diplomatic blunders, earthquakes, the overworking of a planet, planet killers, and rag tag fleets looking for a new home. Plus let's not forget classic space monsters as it wouldn't a 4x space game without space amoeba!
Some of these events like a comet coming to your system can't happen before 50 turns into the game. So that means if you are starting out a game in the earliest technological stage of the game you will have 50 turns to before the game even can start to random generate a number for that event to even potentially occur. Which in the case of the comet would only be about a 1% chance of it occurring in the entire galaxy at turn 50. So players should have the resources to defend themselves from these random events, but also see these events at least in the early game as a potential risk that needs to be prepared for.
The consequences of random events in Lord of Rigel vary in how they can be dealt with. Some events like supernova's can be averted if the player produces sufficient research points to research technology to stop a star going supernova. Some other events will just have to be belt with and are irreversible such as over mining. Other events will require players to fight their way out of it such as space monsters.
Random events should throw some spice into the mix of the ever changing Lord of Rigel galaxy. Players can expect to see some familiar events as well as some new ones. Players will need respond to events and in some cases just cope with events in a variety of ways. However what maybe most important about the random event system in Lord of Rigel is our focus on making random events not random crippling events or random diverting events that distract players from progressing their empire.
