I started playing Discovery earlier this year. But due to some unfortunate circumstances, I had to stop somewhere around April.
Now that I started again, I noticed that the number of NPCs showing up throughout Sirius has again been lowered dramatically. So my question is, did the server start decreasing the amounts of NPCs when player count is up?
If that is the case, I personally feel that NPC encounters are essential to any Freelancer experience. For example, my explorer/scientist character now feels kind of deprived of an essential feature. Because space without NPCs is simply devoid of life and everything, every base, planet, tradelane seems pointless. This is in due part to the fact that human players are few and far in between making most of the space simply kind of pointless and ghastly. Flying through is simply depressing and very tedious.
So, I would like to now what is the current situation concerning NPCs, how will it develop, as they were an essential part in my Freelancer experience, as I believe they were in the experiences of other players!
Cheers!:)
The number and frequency of NPC spawns are directly tied to the number of players connected to the server. The more players, the less NPCs, and vice versa. This is to reduce stress on the server during high population periods.
If you log onto the server when there are 100 or more players, you'll rarely see any NPCs. If you log on when there are 40 or fewer players, you'll be getting swarmed to death by NPCs in any hostile system.
' Wrote:...as they were an essential part in my Freelancer experience, as I believe they were in the experiences of other players!
Sorry, have to disagree with you here. NPCs are severely annoying and get in the way of the main point of the server--RPing with other PEOPLE.
Thanks for the quick feedback Tenacity!
Kudos!
Hielor, I understand they can be a nuisance, had some problems with rping, but I still preferred it with more of them around!
I love NPCs, I see no reason why they should be decreased in number or even removed. Their presence out weigh the annoyance they cause much more. You complain about NPCs now, but you'll be begging to have them back once they're removed from the game.
The performance issue caused by NPC activity is mostly negligible, but it's still more beneficial to lower the number when player activity is high.
Is there actually a scaling mechanism in place, or is it just a fixed ceiling (like ~2000 NPCs)? Seems to get more bursty, and not just lower volume, so I suspect the latter (EG, player mission ends, 2 squads spawn somewhere else).
yap i also love NPCs , the way they showup , intrect with you ,and with each other and with srroundings ,stations,planets,bases. They really put life to freelancer ,so please please please admins, dev ,increase their petrols and respawning , thanks alot:D
i love to intrect with them while playing on server ,and i personaly like and hope if their are more Caps petrols , yes they are mostly just close to planets , not near stations , and near other areas ,like Zone-21 ,lol it must be well guarded ,isnt? Well now their are just 2 wep platforms.:lol:
I beleive the only time that NPCs stop spawning is when the server hits complete capacity. Otherwise, they should spawn. May I suggest going to places where a lot of patrol paths intercept, along with areas near bases if you want to find NPCs?
I think that earlier this year, the number of NPC spawns wasn't influenced by the number of online players. As I remember, the server was moved to a new, more up to date machine that took the load of both frequent NPC spawning and high player count.
But now it seems this was reverted to the older setting, which determines NPC spawning based on the number of players. So it's a step back for the mod.
I just flew from Liberty to Kusari, and encountered just a few NPC, and all of those were just tradelane hits by pirates. Space around bases and planets is completely devoid of any activity. Which makes the game plain and completely unrealistic. :(
I hope the more frequent NPC encounters come back with 4.86!!!!
Oh my god please not.
Imagine a cap fight two Vidars against one turtle near a planet, when suddenly 3 BS patrols spawn. Or the strength of NPCs in Gamma/Alpha.