Anyone notice? Large NPC ship spawning at compromised nav beacons have significantly reduced since payout increases.

[PontifusRex]

My wing mate and I regularly bounty hunt at a compromised navigation beacon.

We have noticed that since the bounty voucher payouts were increased, we no longer have large ships (Anaconda, Cutter, Type-10 Defender etc.) spawning in location. The bulk of the NPC (wanted ships) appearing now are small and occasionally a handful of mediums appear.

While the payouts are better, there is not much challenge fighting small ships in a fully engineered large ship (such as a Corvette).

I wonder if this was intentional?

 

[tafkabb]

Ships have always spawned in classes, in resource sites at least. If you see Vipers , you'll only get Vipers, Cobras, Adders, etc. If you see Anacondas you'll get those and Cutters and T10s etc.

When I was working on my combat rank I headed for compromised nav beacons because I was more certain of finding small Elite ranked ships there.
You're probably better off in a hazardous resource site if you're after credits rather than rank. You'll get large targets there more often.

 

[PontifusRex]

Thanks! We usually fight in the Jimavi system and if the nav beacon doesn't pan out, we move to the local HAZRES. Lately, it seems it's been the same for both though.

We started at the nav beacon last night and quickly moved to the HAZRES. The HAZRES was worse (very few ships spawning in at all), so we moved back to the nav beacon. In Jimavi, we usually get a fair number of 'condas and T-10s at the nav beacon but they have dried up completely.

 

[Requiem Mortis]

I often go BH at CNB and have not noticed any difference in spawn rates of ship types as a consequence of the latest changes.....it's all just RNG.

 

[PontifusRex]

My buddy and I discussed recently that it could also be a matter of us being winged up together and at near the same combat rank level. We are both flying G5 engineered 'vettes usually.

We've surmised that the game code adjusts the spawning according to what threat (live player) appear in location.

We based this on our observations that if one of us leaves the CNB/HAZRES, invariably a large ship (or a wing of three mediums) will appear almost immediately afterwards. I have also noticed changes to the spawns if one of us switches to a medium or small ship. I've seen this happen in pirate activity signal sources as well.

I've found since I made my original post that if I play solo, it's business as usual. It only seems to occur when we are in a wing and in location together.