I am regularly seeing unbalanced spiral-8 galaxies being generated (full settings in screenshots below - mostly set to default). With 'many constellations' and the default empire spread, I would expect each empire to start in its own constellation, with all starting constellations occupying one arm of the galaxy and being connected to the central constellation. Instead, I often see two or more empires in a single constellation and/or in a constellation without a connection to the galactic core.

Example:

In the example above, the Sophons (purple), Horiatio (orange) and United Empire (turquoise) have all started in the same constellation, and that constellation is not connected to the central constellation. Moving clockwise, there are two unoccupied constellations, then the other five empires in their own constellations (the green one is me). In terms of game balance this is pretty much utterly broken.

The three stranded AIs have handled this situation predictably badly, and have never managed to send any ships outside their constellation, as far as I can tell. The Cravers (red) and Unfallen (lilac) never seemed to get going either, and the Unfallen in particular often seemed to think I had fleets bordering their space even though I was nowhere near, which makes me wonder if their internal idea of the galaxy shape is confused. Another oddity is that the top constellation had three minor civilisations in adjacent systems (Kionos, Omdor, and Wei). The Riftborn (magenta) and Lumeris (blue) are the only AI civilisations which have been viable in this game.

Game version is 1.0.61 and galaxy settings are as follows:

I can upload a save if that would help.

I'll second this. I play on the same balance settings as Lamsey and spiral galaxies are the worst offenders in terms of unbalanced map generation.

I'm not entirely sure, but it seems like it's to do with balance being focussed on constellation rather than on nearby systems and connectivity. I've had games on spiral where the constellations have all been fairly similar in terms of resources, but one end of the constellation where player A starts is filled with large, rich systems, with multiple node connectivity and wormhole, and the other end where player B starts having long-by-parsec, 2 starlane, connections, with poor systems (low planet count, T3 planets) at each end.

Balancing will never be perfect (nor should it be - it means you need to adapt) but it might be worth looking at galaxy balancing for spiral 4 and spiral 8 again, just to make sure that these kinds of situations are intended. I never run into the same radical differences on other galaxy types (Ovoid seems to be the best overall). These haven't been one off experiences, but frustratingly regular on these galaxy types. If it helps I can upload some screenshots as well.

Hi guys :)

I have attached this thread to our bug tracker so please don't hesitate to upload your saves for our programmers to look into!

Thank you!

Cheers,